Mom and I went to meet a friend for lunch a week ago and just as we were sitting down at the table, Mom’s phone rang. It was the funeral home. That’s odd, we weren’t expecting to hear back from them for months. Our local medical examiner for the multi-parish area retired and all autopsies and death reporting was being directed to Beaumont in the next state. Although a coroner called soon after her death to tell Mom he was quite certain it was a natural death, we were told it could be six months before we received an official cause of death to make the final report because of the backlog and waiting on toxicology. So, we were surprised to get a phone call barely two months out. We had a feeling it was heart and blood pressure related.
There are three parts to the cause of death:
Part A – Cardiac Tamponade
Part B – Aortic Dissection
Part C – Hypertensive Cardiovascular Disease
During the Covid shutdown, I had started getting Heather and our friends to exercise together at our house a few times a week . We were slowly making changes and healthier decisions together. But we both suffer with depression and it’s a slow process to make positive life changes into regular habits. She was slowly adopting healthier eating habits and slowed down her soda intake and was eating just a salad at home for lunch most days of the week. In 2022, I ended up having to move to California and she was alone here. It was a struggle for her to make so many life adjustments at one time while still being a recovering drug addict years clean. But by the time I left, none of us knew it was too late and her heart was counting down.
Our Dad had high blood pressure and was on medicine for most of our childhood. Heather knew she had high blood pressure and was too afraid to learn what else might be wrong. She didn’t have health insurance and wasn’t ready just yet to face a diagnosis and make changes on her own. With untreated high blood pressure, it put a strain on her heart over time. Eventually, the aorta tore and blood went where it wasn’t supposed to and she died in a matter of seconds most likely. She was sitting upright in bed and I believe gravity slowly pulled her body down to the floor with her face resting on the surface next to her bed. There was no bruising or blood which indicates that she was probably already deceased when she ended up in that position. That’s how my mother found her later the next afternoon.
Our Dad had been secretly suffering since July 2005 with what turned out to be cancer. He had a growth on the side of his neck that would swell up to the size of a tennis ball and then it would shrink back down the next day. Only when we saw the growth did we realize something was wrong. But my dad had begun powerlifting in his fifties and was drinking protein shakes and taking vitamins and was very fit, and he didn’t want to bother with it. So, we blew it off as no big deal and thought he would get better. But he knew he was dying and he would repeatedly tell us point blank, “I’m going to die soon.” Then, at the end of August in 2005, Hurricane Rita destroyed our town and we had to evacuate for nearly a month. The stress of being evacuated for weeks along with not knowing if we had a house to go back to after the hurricane took a huge toll on his health and he passed away a few months later that following January.
From the beginning, he decided he didn’t want to know what was wrong. He didn’t want to go through chemotherapy just to live one more miserable year and die leaving us a huge medical debt. He didn’t want to know and my mother didn’t want an autopsy. He said more than once, “I did what God sent me here to do and I’m ready to go meet Jesus.” And that was the end of that.
Take care of yourselves. Do your best to exercise regularly. Eat moderately. Make healthy choices and don’t eat too much. Listen to your body. Pay attention to how you feel and don’t let something get so bad that you feel too scared to deal with it. The longer you wait, the worse it gets. If you don’t know what the implications are, you won’t know how bad the problem can get and you could suddenly lose your life. It’s never too late to take care of yourself until you’re dead. Take care of your heart and your diet. They go hand in hand. If you’re reading this, I want you to know that people want you to take care of yourself. You matter and you don’t realize how much people love you. My sister didn’t know how many people’s lives she touched and we were overwhelmed after her death learning just how much so many people loved her. She was special and so are you. Please take care of yourself. And make sure you tell the people around you that you love them and care about them before they’re gone someday.