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A bunch of Greek and Latin words
Jul. 18th, 2003 01:13 amThe official cause of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tim_maroney's death was a pulmonary embolism following probable deep vein thrombosis of unknown etiology.
Pulmonary embolism: blood clots in the lungs, which keep the blood from becoming oxygenated, causing suffocation; also, clots can break up and enter heart, blocking coronary arteries and killing even more quickly.
Deep vein thrombosis: Clots forming in the large veins of the extremities, especially the legs.
Unknown etiology: We don't know why. The most common cause is physical trauma; the second-most common cause is prolonged immobilization, as on a long flight. None of the common causes applied in Tim's case.
Tim exhibited two symptoms of a pulmonary embolism. The first, he noticed: shortness of breath. However, Tim has long had intermittent allergies, and he attributed the shortness to that. The second, he didn't notice, but is very obvious in retrospect: a sense of formless apprehension. His final post makes that quite clear, to me.
As I believenellorat mentioned in one of her many posts about Tim's death, my father has had two pulmonary embolisms in the past 15 years. There are a number of known genetic conditions which can predispose one to deep vein thrombosis, including the relatively common and serious "factor V Leiden" (5% of white Americans) and the less common and less serious "prothrombin 20210 mutation" (2% of Americans). It seems highly likely that Tim shared at least one of these conditions with my father, and as such there's a 50% chance that I or my sister does as well. A blood test exists for factor V Leiden, and I'm going to take it as soon as I can.
tim_maroney's death was a pulmonary embolism following probable deep vein thrombosis of unknown etiology. Pulmonary embolism: blood clots in the lungs, which keep the blood from becoming oxygenated, causing suffocation; also, clots can break up and enter heart, blocking coronary arteries and killing even more quickly.
Deep vein thrombosis: Clots forming in the large veins of the extremities, especially the legs.
Unknown etiology: We don't know why. The most common cause is physical trauma; the second-most common cause is prolonged immobilization, as on a long flight. None of the common causes applied in Tim's case.
Tim exhibited two symptoms of a pulmonary embolism. The first, he noticed: shortness of breath. However, Tim has long had intermittent allergies, and he attributed the shortness to that. The second, he didn't notice, but is very obvious in retrospect: a sense of formless apprehension. His final post makes that quite clear, to me.
As I believe
nellorat mentioned in one of her many posts about Tim's death, my father has had two pulmonary embolisms in the past 15 years. There are a number of known genetic conditions which can predispose one to deep vein thrombosis, including the relatively common and serious "factor V Leiden" (5% of white Americans) and the less common and less serious "prothrombin 20210 mutation" (2% of Americans). It seems highly likely that Tim shared at least one of these conditions with my father, and as such there's a 50% chance that I or my sister does as well. A blood test exists for factor V Leiden, and I'm going to take it as soon as I can.
