Post-writing preamble: After all this, I realize this is really mostly me just blogging about this whole awful, tragic mess, and what it’s done to my beloved sister, and me too since I’m also grieving for both of them. Forgive me for going endlessly on. I just can’t tell you how bereft and shocked we all are, and I guess I just needed to vent.
There is one legit medical/autopsy-related question at the very bottom, if you wanna skip ahead.
Please help me unravel a conundrum that is causing my sister even more pain in addition to the almost unbearable anguish of her husband’s sudden death ten days ago.
Early on August 22, my sister Carla’s husband, Mike (48), died unexpectedly. He hadn’t been ill (as far as Carla knows); the police and M.E. found nothing to indicate this wasn’t natural causes, most likely a heart attack. The night before, Carla and Mike had been to Mike’s class reunion party. Carla had left earlyish (well, 11PM); Mike had stayed to clean up and wind down w/stragglers.
BACKGROUND:
Mike had a history of a single heart attack 20+ years ago when he was a chef/restaurant owner and stressed as hell. (Much like most chefs.) He had a cocaine addiction at roughly the same time; hasn’t used since (again, as far as Carla knows). Also, he was a diabetic, although it was pretty controlled. His last visit w/a doctor was a year ago July, when he’d had a kidney issue and herniated disc; otherwise he was fine.
One other big health thing, which only Carla knew about–she told me only last week: In his early 30s, Mike had non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Something he apparently kept completely secret from his family (don’t ask, but in short, they’re assholes) and the majority of his friends, the reason probably being that he didn’t want to worry them, and also didn’t want their fear to add to his own. So, both self-protective and protecting others. Was treated, went into remission, end of story.
Maybe.
THE MYSTERY(/IES)
Now we get to the weird things that are troubling us, Carla especially. Oh, and just to start off with, the autopsy came back inconclusive, toxicology report pending. We won’t know anything for 4 to 6 weeks, God help us.
CLUE 1. The day after Mike died, one of his friends who had also been to the party, called Carla and said that at about 3AM, he (the friend) had been about to leave the ‘afterparty,’ so to speak, when Mike had said, “You sure you want to go? There are party favors…” Carla didn’t understand the reference (she is not exactly hip to the drug scene, to put it mildly), after which the friend explained that he assumed that meant, well, drugs, in particular coke. Friend claimed he’d said nah, it was too late, and left Mike w/the rest of the few left at the venue.
This took Carla aback (MAJOR understatement) because as far as she knew, Mike no longer used.
Before everyone leaps to the assumption that Carla was just blind as a bat and any husband/spouse/partner can easily pull the wool over another person’s eyes, I should mention that Mike/Carla live in a studio apartment, both work from home many days of the week, they spent almost all free time together, and in his attitude/behavior there was never never never any indication that Mike was using anything.
I also spent time w/Mike–he and I were good friends (I live in the same building they do), and he never had a problem with my stopping by spur-of-the-moment just to say hi or hang out. The reason I mention this is that it’s not as if he was behaving secretively, as if he had anything to hide.
Mike was a workaholic who did tech support for restaurants, and he was extremely well thought of by his clients, who knew they could count on him like clockwork. Also, Mike was just so… God, how can I sum this up?
He was quite simply one of the most straightforward and true-to-his-word people I’ve ever known. I don’t trust people easily, but he made me feel completely comfortable. He treated me as a sister and friend. Most of all, he made Carla happy and quite clearly adored her. For all these reasons and more, I didn’t just love him, I admired him greatly.
I’m not saying this admiration would be diminished if I found out he’d used coke; an addiction is an addiction. I would be saddened that his illness had made him hide something from Carla and, possibly, contributed to this tragic death.
CLUE 2. Right after the funeral, as Carla was accepting the condolences of attendees, one of Mike’s not-very-close business contacts said to her in hushed tones, “So this was related to his cancer coming back?”
Rewind to several paragraphs above. Mike had kept this cancer-from-years-ago hella secret from just about everyone, even his dearest friends. Carla said (in a nice way), WTF are you talking about, and also, no.
Tactless Business Contact: “Oh, well, two months ago he was looking tired and I asked him what was wrong and he said his cancer had returned, but this time he didn’t want to go through chemo, he was treating it ‘homeopathically.’”
Um, so… Carla had no fucking idea about this. She feels as she’s been living with someone she didn’t know. Except she knew him, she saw him day in, day out. She saw no sign whatsoever of illness.
Yes, sometimes he was tired, but not out of the ordinary considering he biked around NYC constantly in the hot summer to do his tech support stuff. Also, Mike didn’t believe in woo homeopathic shit. He was logical and cynical and mocked woo pretty mercilessly.
Also also, even if Mike were to believe in homeopathic shit because he was now desperate, Carla would’ve known if he had changed his diet or was adding some supplements like… I dunno, bat guano or whatever the hell homeopaths use. He hadn’t lost weight–maybe a couple of pounds, which seem in line with his bike riding–and just didn’t act like someone whose cancer had returned and it was preying on him, but was hiding it from his fucking wife.
Literally five days before his death, he and Carla went up to Boston for a two-mile walking tour, and they were together constantly. He was fitter than she was!
They were planning on buying a house this year. In a recent conversation with me, Mike expressed a lot of optimism–and it didn’t seem forced, I swear–about how well his business was growing, and he was enjoying the summer and just generally his usual engaged, funny, idiosyncratic self.
Oh. I should mention that after this conversation with the Tactless Business Contact, Carla contacted his doctor (the one he’d liked from last year, when he’d had the kidney ailment) to see if he’d visited her re: any cancer diagnosis. Doc said no, she was shocked to learn he’d died, and also said that even if the cancer had returned, it would be extremely unlikely to have caused a sudden death like this.
(I’m just spitballing but this seems right to me. I mean, if it had been that fast-spreading to have been the likely cause of death, wouldn’t the autopsy have found evidence of it in his organs, e.g. the liver or wherever non-Hodgkins Lymphoma usually spreads?)
CLUE 3. Now it’s time to do the awful stuff relating to financial details. Mike didn’t leave a will and so there’s no real question that everything goes to Carla. But his business needs to be dealt with since he has clients and so on, so Carla had to get into his computer, which of course was password-protected (he carries the laptop everywhere so privacy is understandable) and, also of course, Carla didn’t know the password.
Actually, a couple of days after he died, I posted about this computer problem (among other financial issues). Luckily getting inside turned out to be easier to get into than we’d feared, as it seems to have been just a basic screensaver password rather than some major privacy software.
So tonight Carla was able to get into the computer, by now less interested in the business data (at least tonight) and more interested in Mike’s email and browsing history. In particular she was looking for something related to cancer or… well, anything. But there was nothing unusual at all. Except…
Back in June (which would’ve been around the same time that Tactless Business Contact had supposedly had the conversation w/Mike), Mike had done a lookup on longterm disability insurance.
Also in June, Carla found one email to a friend–who’s on disability for drug addiction–saying something like, “Carla and I are looking into our longterm disability insurance options. What company did you go with?”
This is the first outright untruth Carla has discovered. Mike had never spoken about disability insurance w/Carla.
Important to note: this conversation ended with the friend’s response of… well I don’t remember the company. It doesn’t appear that Mike ever applied or researched this further; there are no mailed documents or emails or other sites in his browser history since that date whatsoever.
One final thing: It was also around this time that Mike, for the first time in seven years, contacted his estranged father and tried to arrange a visit. The dad wasn’t well so they never ended up connecting, which is really sad. Although I’m glad Mike seemed to have found some rapprochement with the guy, even if he was a shitty father.
And that, my friends, is what we have thus far.
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So. What the actual fuck?
As you can probably guess, by now poor Carla is really rattled and feeling all sorts of self-recriminations, because she’s grieving and thus her emotions are all over the place and guilt is taking the center stage right now. She’s afraid he didn’t trust her with the truth about either returning to coke use, or his cancer returning.
Here are my own thoughts, in order of likelihood (IMHO):
A. Mike was feeling run-down in June, maybe under the weather. Maybe it reminded him of the symptoms of his original bout with cancer. In some weird moment of vulnerability, he told the Tactless Business Contact that he believed his cancer had returned. He didn’t go to a doctor (there are no bills, he’s on Carla’s health insurance, and the doctor he liked a lot knew nothing) but was catastrophizing.
He might have been afraid to go to the doc to confirm this–not terribly unusual–yet acted accordingly. Hence the brief disability insurance lookup, hence the getting-in-touch-with-asshat-dad, and hence the moment of vulnerability in which he mentioned to Tactless Business Contact his concern, probably assuming it wouldn’t get back to Carla or anyone else he knew/cared about. He probably wasn’t ready to tell her of his fears, not wanting to worry her yet.
Then, since there’s literally nothing else in the subsequent two months since to indicate he was sick or that he’d confirmed a diagnosis, maybe he started to feel better, realized he’d blown the whole thing out of proportion, and so there was no need in his mind to tell Carla anything.
Conclusion: Death was from a heart attack, because he was a 49-year-old diabetic ex-drug user who continually overworked himself. For whatever reason, it wasn’t conclusive in the autopsy. (I admit I don’t understand why a heart attack wouldn’t be easy to confirm, so maybe this is wrong.)
B. All of the above, plus on the night of the party, he was hanging out with the same people with whom he’d originally had some drug-using past. Because he was feeling good, or maybe because he was feeling tired, he did some coke. Not an overdose, but enough to cause problems for his heart.
Conclusion: Death was from a heart attack, precipitated by drug use, and also possibly age, diabetes, overwork.
C. Same as B, except he did have cancer, presumably non-aggressive. He didn’t tell Carla because he was working up the courage, but he didn’t have time when the heart attack hit him.
Conclusion: Death was from a heart attack, precipitated by drug use, also weakened system, age, diabetes, overwork.
(What nags at me is that it just seems so out of character for him not to get his ducks in a row. Mike was always extremely concerned about making sure Carla was happy and protected, so how could he fall down on the job here? Why didn’t he go for the disability insurance? Why is there literally no documentary evidence that he’d gone to any doctor or clinic or witch doctor or whatever the hell would’ve diagnosed him?)
D. Mike was a Colombian drug lord who was searching disability insurance because he was gonna put a hit on Carla to hobble her in some way and get that sweet, sweet insurance payoff.
Conclusion: Death was from a Bulgarian umbrella tip using an untraceable poison.
Frankly I find D nearly as likely as any suggestion that Mike was using drugs on the regs, so to speak. If he does, he was a masterful hider of it. Their studio is about 20x27. One bathroom, shared medicine cabinet. If he had any addiction that I saw, it was his addiction to frickin’ bike accessories. (He had three bicycles, including a folding one, and he just loved shopping for various doodads to help him carry around his various computer tech for his support calls.)
But seriously. WHAT IS GOING ON?
I’ll end this crazy Encyclopedia Brown mystery (adult version) with a repetition of my unswerving love for Mike. I am as straightedge and teetolating as a person can be, at least if you ignore the benzos I’m prescribed for panic disorder. (Which, in fairness, could get me some good money on the street!)
Nevertheless, if cocaine or some other substance was involved in his death, I will think of Mike simply as my wonderful, loving, adorable, empathetic, fiercely political, protective, funny-as-hell brother (I really think of him more as a brother/friend than just a brother-in-law) who made a dumbass mistake.
People make dumbass mistakes all the time that, by sheer luck, don’t cause their deaths. In this case, maybe Mike’s luck failed. Either way he was a fucking fantastic human being and I bless the day he entered Carla’s life and enriched our entire family.
Also, my poor, big-hearted sister is in agony. Carla is knocked for a loop and full of all sorts of self-recriminations, because she’s grieving and thus her emotions are all over the place and guilt is taking the center stage right now. She’s afraid he didn’t trust her with the truth about either returning to coke use, or his cancer returning. And so it’s her fault. Also it’s her fault if he was pushing himself too hard. And on and on and on.
For putting her through this albeit inadvertently, I guess I am upset with Mike. But I know his love for her was such that he’d be furious enough at himself for hurting her–more furious than the rest of us put together.
If anyone has any ideas or theories, please go on.
I guess if there’s one tangible question someone might be able to ask, it’d be this medical/forensic question: Is it possible for someone to die of a heart attack or other natural cause, e.g., aneurism/stroke/pulmonary embolism/blood clot/whatever, but not have it be easily identifiable in an initial physical autopsy?
Again, I guess this was part question, part mystery, and a bigger part venting and my needing to just write about this.
Sorry. And also, help.
Just adding my 2 cents.