My good pal and neighbor passed away suddenly and unexpectedly a few days ago. He had crashed his rental car–fortunately not into anyone else–and what caused the crash was a massive heart attack. His arteries were clogged.
He was 61 years old and about a year away from retiring.
He leaves behind his devastated lady of 15 years’ partnership and a ton of friends and neighbors who are in total shock.
I talked to this couple nearly every day in person, online, on phone, texting; we dined out together, had BBQs, beer, casino runs, took walks with their dog, and more.
He had a family history of this type of health problem, but he was very stubborn and never went to the doc or even got any kind of screening that would have revealed the arterial or cardiac issues.
This is why I keep telling similarly stubborn pals that they really need to take the time to get checked out, because you just never know.
So that’s my plea. Don’t ignore health screenings because you’re too busy, gotta go to work, it’s inconvenient, whatever.
And if you get checks and they tell you to see a specialist about some results they don’t like, do it.
My grandfather got regular checkups, courtesy of being a soccer ref. At one point he had such horrible pain that he had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance (decades before he’d walked to the hospital with peritonitis, his pain-o-meter was broken on the high side), had emergency prostate surgery and spent almost one month in the hospital.
When his daughters said “isn’t it unusual that the yearly checks never found anything?”, it turned out they had. He’d been diagnosed with prostatitis ten years prior; what could have been half an hour’s worth of outpatient surgery turned into a month-long hospitalization. Being a man doesn’t mean you don’t get sick; ignoring a diagnosis doesn’t make it go away.
Sorry for your loss, vivalostwages.
vivalostwages I am so sorry. I get regular health checkups, and follow through on instructions, hope that means something.
“If onlys” are the saddest losses. Good to hear you keep up on your own health. Maybe with this thread you will have got someone off of their butts and in to the doctor, and will have saved a life.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I also lost a friend to similar circumstances. Out and out refused to see a doctor, get screened, etc. I’m pretty sure it was likely untreated high blood pressure that caused his death.
I was kinda angry, for some time afterward, to be honest. High blood pressure is very treatable, dammit!
Worse still, I know more men like this. It’s just so senseless!
Clogged arteries can be treated as well. And I totally know what you mean about the anger. “P” left behind grieving fam and friends in several different countries, reeling over this untimely and unnecessary loss. His lady, M, was a retired nurse who had tried countless times to get him to go have check ups, but you can’t physically drag a big guy to the car and into an office. His dad had dropped dead of a heart attack at a rather young age, too. You’d think that would have had more of an impact on his son’s decisions later. :mad:
P and M had met in high school, dated, split amicably, several yrs later she married another guy, had two sons, that guy died, and she and P got back together after being apart for at least 20 yrs. They’d had 15 years together by the time he passed. Could have had more.
Oh, the would have, could have, should have litany is one of the saddest.
Our mutual friend J and I have been taking our walks around the neighborhood, sans M and the dog, telling folks what’s happened. It’s so hard to watch their faces crumple and see the looks of shock and grief (grown men included). Even the gal who works at our favorite 7-Eleven got weepy when I told her, and she only knew P because he went there on weekends for newspapers and Scratchers. He just had that effect on people.
I really hope J gets a clue from this too. She is in her late 50s and can’t remember the time she had any kind of screening. She says it scares her just to think about getting an exam and finding out there’s a problem. Ummmmm…Wouldn’t it be better to find out if there IS a problem and take action on it early so it doesn’t become worse? I say this to her, and so does her husband. And she still doesn’t make appointments. She says she is busy every day with work or errands and helping look after her grandkids, ages 4 and 1.
I really hope she will be able to see her grandkids grow up.
Sigh. I don’t get it. I just don’t get this mentality.
I believe that there are some men who would rather live the life they want, eat the food they want, smoke the substance they want, and die relatively young, rather than meekly change their lives and live longer but (in their eyes) not as well. I think these men feel more independent and manly when they make this (mostly unconscious) choice. And if they think about this part at all, they all think that they will be “lucky” enough to die a quick death, as in the OP, rather than ending up disabled and helpless, which these days is more likely.
This is one of the pieces of macho nonsense that I have no time for. I take care of my health not just because I want to live a long time, but because I want to be able to enjoy all, or almost all, of that time. And I don’t think about what I am giving up, I think about what I am getting instead.
It really is all about the quality of life, but not in the way those guys think.
I have a similar cautionary tale for friends everywhere. My closest and dearest friend died in January. He had been ill for two or three months. When I say “ill”, I mean nothing really specific - didn’t look well, lost weight, had a bit of trouble walking which he said was his dodgy knees.
I hassled him and hassled him to see a doctor. He did. He had blood tests. He was given medication. Or at least that’s what he told me.
He was found dead at home in January and in the following weeks the lies unraveled - he wasn’t even registered with a doctor, and hadn’t set foot in a health care setting since he was about 8.
He had lung cancer and didn’t even know it. He was 55.
I was recently given the green light after 2 years of anxious waiting after some spots were discovered in my lungs. It was, to be blunt, hell. But I never avoided the doctor, I made appointments, and saw specialists. It was nerve-wracking, but worth it.
My 85yo grandmother was just (this past week) informed that she has three of her cardiac arteries 90% blocked by plaque and has significant aortic stenosis. The procedures to fix these issues are too dangerous for her, so she made the decision to forgo any treatment. She was told —or at least her family was told—by the cardiologist that she has a 50% chance of living the next 6 months. But even knowing that there was likely nothing to be done if they found bad things, she continued to see the doc and follow his recommendations. Why more people don’t do such things is beyond me.
My husband is one of the “no doctor” guys. He’s 63 and hasn’t been to see one in years. I know what his primary issues are: the doctor will tell him to stop drinking and to get an umbilical hernia fixed. He doesn’t want to deal with either of these problems, and so avoids the doctor.
I just went to a funeral this morning. The woman wan forty one, dying in the hospital five days after her birthday.
Her mother is the manager at my workplace. She said her daughter hadn’t been feeling well for almost a month, losing weight and not being able to eat much, so she finally made her go. After exams, and two sets of bloodwork she was admitted to the hospital.
She never left, dying nine days later from a fast growing agressive cancer. Whether she could have been treated doesn’t mean anything now, but part of her mother’s grief is wondering should she have been more insistent on seeing someone sooner.
Listen to your body people. Now the childcare center she worked for is wondering how to tell the little kids that their favorite caregiver isn’t coming back.
I sometimes wonder if this is what happened to my Dad, who dropped dead at 57 in much the same way as **viva’**s friend, minus the car and tree. He was a heavy, heavy smoker and I’m sure he didn’t want to hear the doctor tell him to quit smoking. Or he was just in denial. Wish I could ask him. I wonder if he ever thought he might not be around to see me grown up.
Outside of injury, I hadn’t been to a doctor for two decades until about 8 ys ago. To get my front teeth fixed from a motorcycle wreck, my dentist demanded I get my hypertension under control. At the primary care physician, I also found out I caught the diabetuss.
Eight years, and minus forty lbs later, I have the heart of a 30 yr old. In a jar in my fridge, but still…
Thanks for the reminder. My Dad just had two stents put in and needs a third (which will happen in a few weeks) One went into a place with a 99% blockage.
