Well, yes, she probably was having “flu-like symptoms” but, you know, flu can and does kill people, too. It could be she felt ill but didn’t realize just how sick she actually was. Breathing problems can incapacitate a person a lot quicker than most people realize.
As for Hackman - the coroner is saying there were signs of Alzheimer’s, the family is saying he didn’t have it. Well, the family could be in denial, or perhaps he was one of those people who have changes in their brain but somehow it’s not affecting him as much as such things normally would. Maybe Betsy helped him compensate.
Maybe, wife his wife lying dead on the floor, he abandoned himself to despair and wandered around the house not eating and neglecting himself for a week before collapsing himself.
i am wondering how stress affects alzheimers. At some point, he had to be aware that there was a dead person in the bathroom, and perhaps he had moments of lucidity in which he realized who the dead person was, but I suspect the grief in that knowledge may have overwhelmed the lucid moments and just left him confused, disoriented and indecisive. It would seem likely that he either starved to death or failed to take an important medication.
My uncle died from a heart attack in the bathroom. My aunt who had Alzheimer’s didn’t understand what was happening. My cousin called to check on them that night and she just kept repeating that Bob was asleep in the bathroom. It was heartbreaking.
Authorities linked her death to hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare but potentially fatal disease spread by infected rodent droppings.
Mayo Clinic:
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome is a rare infectious disease that begins with flu-like symptoms and progresses rapidly to more severe disease. It can lead to life-threatening lung and heart problems. The disease is also called hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome.
I think heart disease is an extra broad cause of death if that’s what’s listed as the “last” cause on his death certificate. I’d guess here the specific type of heart disease would be a sudden heart attack/heart failure.
People with Alzheimer’s are at increased risk of heart failure due to increased plaque buildup.
Late: I think what would have contributed more is 9 days of (unknowingly) neglecting your body. Too much to handle and your weak heart gives out.
So is the scientific consensus that there is a direct casual relationship between Alzheimer’s and plaque buildup? Rather than Alzheimer’s being a confounding factor and the unhealthy lifestyle of people with Alzheimer’s (of which this is just an extreme case ) is the actual cause?
So is this actually what the coroner was saying and “Alzheimer’s was a contributing factor” was a just a euphemism
Oh crap, this brings back memories of my uncle’s death, which was horrific.
My maternal uncle had dementia and was physically incapacitated, restricted to a wheelchair.* His wife was fine mentally, and she was his caretaker. She dropped dead of a heart attack and he was too compromised, both physically and mentally, to do anything about it. So she lay dead on the floor and he eventually died of thirst or whatever untreated problem got him first. They had two kids but the family was not close and I think both were living thousands of miles away at the time.
*not Alzheimer’s, but something else, rare enough that AFAIK an official diagnosis has yet to be provided, though it is clearly genetic as my maternal grandfather and a maternal aunt had it. My mother was terrified, with good reason, that she would eventually come down with it too; she died at 78 from other causes. I’m adopted so don’t have to worry about it, but I fear for my maternal cousins!
Death certificates are more art than science. They also vary by State. They also are intended for public health and not just explaining a specific persons death.
I would need to see the actual certificate to answer your question.
A generic DC, it’s immediate cause (minutes). Which was caused by (days). Which was caused by (months). With some additional underlying contributing factors (months/years).
With a heart attack, that would be immediate cause (mins) and sometimes enough (ie not caused by pneumonia or anything). The underlying factor would be Alzheimer’s if it actually caused plaque buildup.
But when you think about it, technically, everyone dies from heart failure (when your heart stops you go from living to dead). So it’s not helpful to always put that. What’s helpful is what causes your body to start shutting down and the underlying conditions that caused that process. That’s the art/public health angle - collecting data to prevent it in the future.
Didn’t mean for this to be long. Here, His wife died and his heart couldn’t take it. The rest is educated guesses.
The final report is more saddening than I could have imagined. How awful would it have been for Gene to be wandering the house for all those days, perhaps not cognizant enough to understand that his dear wife had passed?
What a shitty end to otherwise outstanding lives, both of them.
Yes, this all makes me very sad. Also, the poor dog trapped in the crate. I’m older than my wife, and also more at risk of dying, so I hope that when I go she is fully functional and able to go on. Or, better yet, we both die in some event (she agrees with this). Sorry, these are freaking morbid thoughts but this thread brings them about.
It could also be that he was on daily heart meds that his wife gave him and once she was gone, there was no one to give him his pills so his condition worsened.
In my experience, people caring for a spouse with dementia can really resist taking their own illness seriously, they can be irrationally guilty getting any help, additionally, someone with dementia can be quite frightened of strangers, hostile even violent to anyone else.
So yeah, she dismissed her symptoms until it was too late, and he wandered around the house until he collapsed is a very plausible scenario.
What an unexpected ending to a tragic story. Of all the possible causes of this tragedy, I would never have guessed hantavirus.
Rodents carry disease at the best of times, but deer mice are the worst, even though hantavirus is very rare. I’m reminded of the untimely death of this beautiful young mother of two in Saskatchewan some years ago: She got hantavirus after cleaning out the garage in her family’s rural home south of Regina which apparently had many droppings from deer mice. The disease is so rare that she was misdiagnosed several times until it was too late.
They had two kids but the family was not close and I think both were living thousands of miles away at the time.