ME patient found dead of heart failure and malnutrition

[seansee]

Agreed. Most people think of malnourishment as insufficient energy dense food such as carbs, but it can occur due to deficiency of key nutrients. If he was eating nothing but canned or packet carbohydrate for example, for long enough, that would do it. So would having no essential fats in the diet including from meat or similar. So would a variety of intolerances that restricted his diet. If severe diet restrictions combined with incapacity to shop or cook, and nobody was checking on him, that could also be fatal.

wow really?

 

[peggy-sue]

You would die from malnutrition on a diet consisting of nothing but squirrel meat.
(strange factoid)

 

[alex3619]

You would die from malnutrition on a diet consisting of nothing but squirrel meat.
(strange factoid)

I wonder if that would be true of raw squirrel meat. Cooking it would lead to vitamin C loss, and hence scurvy if that is all you ate. Raw meat on the other hand contains just about everything you need ... but also often parasites etc. Catch 22. What is missing from meat is fibre and a wide range of secondary nutrients especially a range of antioxidants.

 

[PennyIA]

Were you under the care of a doctor at the time? Didn't this concern them? I can see how people can get malnourished, but not to the point of death while under the care of medical professionals -- unless the patient refusing treatment for malnutrition, of course.

It's my understanding that this patient was seeing both a psychiatrist and a medical doctor. One or both should have recognized and treated severe malnutrition.

Just have to chime in. In the USA, with insurance. I complained of severe diahrrea for over five years - 9 out of 10 days. They did two stool samples, didn't find anything and stated - that if I started to see blood in the stool, I should come in. That's it. Nothing else. I wasn't losing weight, but you can't pass a gallon of liquid out of your bowels almost daily and NOT have concerns about nutrition. But, the doctor's did the basic tests and asked me to come back in three months.

 

[alex3619]

Constant diarrhea can lead to mineral depletion. Someone with this problem needs electrolyte support at the very least.

The irony is if you had third world medical care, such as the remote states of India, you would have received electrolyte replacement as a standard treatment. Somehow some modern doctors have lost touch with basic issues, possibly because these problems are rare in first world countries.

 

[peggy-sue]

I'm not sure about raw squirrel, Alex. I do believe that for some reason, it is about the least nutritious meat there is, perhaps it is a lack of vit C? That is ringing bells in the recesses of the gloop that is masquerading as my brain...
Sorry for going off-topic again.

 

[ukxmrv]

I'm wondering what the autopsy doctor would have seen that indicates malnutrition. Was Paul Hancock emaciated or was there organ damage or something that would indicate malnutrition? Guess we will never know unless the report is made public or further investigations are made into his death.

 

[u&iraok]

Constant diarrhea can lead to mineral depletion. Someone with this problem needs electrolyte support at the very least.

The irony is if you had third world medical care, such as the remote states of India, you would have received electrolyte replacement as a standard treatment. Somehow some modern doctors have lost touch with basic issues, possibly because these problems are rare in first world countries.

How true! And now we're dealing with overweight people being malnourished and they still don't get it because they think malnourishment only happens in third world countries. Somehow soil depletion, fruits and vegetables being hybridized to look good and grow quickly so that nutrient content is not important and at low levels, feeding animals crazy things so that the nutrient content of meat is messed up, toxins--chemicals--heavy metals throwing off delicate systems in the body, digestion being less than optimal so that nutrients aren't absorbed, water not being the way it should be, too much sugar and hybridized overprocessed wheat flour and having to eat fast food like McDonalds because it's cheaper than good food, can't possiblly equal malnutrition or health problems!

 

[Allyson]

aarhg lost my long reply again and no draft was saved @Sushi!

 

[Daffodil]

natural causes?!?!?!? fucking UK. why isn't amnesty involved in how they are treating CFS patients?!

 

[ukxmrv]

Because Amnesty ignore us. Patients have written to them over the years and all they get back is a standard letter. Amnesty don't do much for disabled and sick people.

 

[PennyIA]

I certainly would hope that starvation would have been noticed. I doubt this poor fellow was starved, but still.... malnutrition to the point where it is listed as a cause of death should not have been missed if the guy was seeing a physician, which it appears he was. A deficiency of key nutrients to the extent of being a cause of death would have symptoms as well as show up in labs, wouldn't it?

I can see how malnutrition could happen to someone with ME. What I'm struggling with is that he was under the care of multiple health professionals none of whom noticed severe malnutrition. There are, after all, prescription liquid diets, and probably other forms, for people who have serious dietary restrictions so they don't die of malnutrition.

So true. But again. I had severe (like a gallon of brown liquid a day) diahrrea. I'd lost over 20 pounds. My doctor was PROUD of my weight loss and never ONCE suggested any labs or testing to look for malnutrition or mineral depletion. Not once in over six years.

 

[Mia Dit]

Starving yourself to death is a helluva way to commit suicide. Strange they'd even suggest that was a possibility. It's only marginally less odd than making a big deal out of the fact that he didn't make his heart fail on purpose.

Perhaps the reporter was as mystified as I am as to why someone would die of malnourishment under the care of multiple medical professionals in a developed country, so suicide was the only thing s/he could come up with. Turned out not to be true, apparently, but the idea was stuck in the reporter's head so it had to go in the article. I guess the reporter couldn't mentally process that medical/social neglect would be a more likely situation.

Hi SOC,

Perhaps the reporter was mystified, but his health care providers must have been in denial. Some reporters miss the big picture as I think this one has, but the medical professionals have no excuse.

In a paper published by Pub Med in 2009;

Why mylagic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) may kill you: disorders in the inflammatory and oxidative and nitrosative stress (IO&NS) pathways may explain cardiovascular disorders in ME/CFS.


Recently, Jason et al (2006) reported that the mean age of patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome dying from heart failure, i.e. 58.7 years, is significantly lower than the age of those dying from heart failure in the general US population, i.e. 83.1 years. These findings implicate that ME/CFS is a risk factor to cardio-vascular disorder.

Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20038921​

How can any doctor not know the seriousness of this illness? Simply googling "heart problems + ME/CFS + research" resulted in ~ 455,000 hits. If you're terminal within months to a few years the medical profession springs into action to find a cause and a cure, as they should. But a reduction of 30.6 years of my life is in my humble opinion a medical emergency, because I would only live 11 more years. Will they finally get worried when I only have a few months or a year left to live?

Poor Mr. Hancock didn't even make it to the mean age 58.7. Could he have lived to his 54th birthday? We'll never know, but I wonder why none of the doctors he was seeing took a more active roll to help Mr. Hancock. It could have started with simple steps, but it was steps that were necessary to save his life, and steps it appears Mr. Hancock was too ill to take for himself.

My thoughts are with his family and loved ones.

Peace,
Mia

 

[jimells]

Mr Hancock's fate could easily be my own. When I qualified for Medicaid I was able to have a case manager who would take me to the grocery and doctors appointments when I was too sick to drive. Then I finally won disability and lost Medicaid. the case manager, and food stamps.

Now I have no outside help. Sometimes I can only get to the grocery every two weeks. Fortunately I have enough money to keep a well stocked pantry, and apples and onions keep for a long time.

In theory I am under a doctor's care even though I haven't seen her for over a year. Travel is just too difficult and besides, she doesn't do anything anyhow, so why bother? They keep renewing my prescriptions for Florinef and Imitrex, so I guess that means I'm still a patient.

p.s. I just passed 58.7 years a few weeks ago. I guess that means my time is just about up. Oh well. I tried to make a difference while I was able.

 

[Mia Dit]

Mr Hancock's fate could easily be my own. When I qualified for Medicaid I was able to have a case manager who would take me to the grocery and doctors appointments when I was too sick to drive. Then I finally won disability and lost Medicaid. the case manager, and food stamps.

Now I have no outside help. Sometimes I can only get to the grocery every two weeks. Fortunately I have enough money to keep a well stocked pantry, and apples and onions keep for a long time.

In theory I am under a doctor's care even though I haven't seen her for over a year. Travel is just too difficult and besides, she doesn't do anything anyhow, so why bother? They keep renewing my prescriptions for Florinef and Imitrex, so I guess that means I'm still a patient.

p.s. I just passed 58.7 years a few weeks ago. I guess that means my time is just about up. Oh well. I tried to make a difference while I was able.

jimells,

The 58.7 years is the mean average, which means people lived longer than that age. No one knows how long we have and I refuse to give up. This illness affects people so differently. If you haven't seen the YouTube video "I Remember Me" you may want to watch it. Many people continue to live long lives and to even regain some health.

I hope you can see that you still make a difference - we all do. It may be in different ways than we had initially
hoped. Our voices here and on other sites can be heard and shared. It made a difference to me that you responded to what I said and that you passed the 58.7 mean age average. I've come to believe that the value of a human life is not measured only in Herculean sacrifices some people are able to do for others, the amount of money we make, and definitely not our physical abilities. I believe it is reaching out in kindness and compassion to the best of our abilities.

Peace,
Mia

 

[*GG*]

jimells,

The 58.7 years is the mean average, which means people lived longer than that age. No one knows how long we have and I refuse to give up. This illness affects people so differently. If you haven't seen the YouTube video "I Remember Me" you may want to watch it. Many people continue to live long lives and to even regain some health.

I hope you can see that you still make a difference - we all do. It may be in different ways than we had initially
hoped. Our voices here and on other sites can be heard and shared. It made a difference to me that you responded to what I said and that you passed the 58.7 mean age average. I've come to believe that the value of a human life is not measured only in Herculean sacrifices some people are able to do for others, the amount of money we make, and definitely not our physical abilities. I believe it is reaching out in kindness and compassion to the best of our abilities.

Peace,
Mia

Beautifully said and couldn't agree with you more!

GG

 

[Mia Dit]

Beautifully said and couldn't agree with you more!

GG

Thank you GG,

Love the saying. I often remind myself that not all doctors finished first in their class. We have several doctors on my husbands side of the family and my own. Fortunately, I think most finished their studies by more than the skin of their teeth, but I've met a few I seriously question. Like when the immunologist my primary care sent me to decided to test me for bedbugs among other useless things. HA! My husband didn't see the humor in it, but I laughed so hard I cried. Test was negative by the way.

 

[Little Bluestem]

I've come to believe that the value of a human life is not measured only in Herculean sacrifices some people are able to do for others, the amount of money we make, and definitely not our physical abilities. I believe it is reaching out in kindness and compassion to the best of our abilities.

I very much believe that, too. However I have found it much more difficult to carry out acts of kindness and compassion since I have become ill. Even something as 'simple' as making a phone call is taxing. Nonetheless, I do continue to do what I can.

 

[MeSci]

Mr Hancock's fate could easily be my own. When I qualified for Medicaid I was able to have a case manager who would take me to the grocery and doctors appointments when I was too sick to drive. Then I finally won disability and lost Medicaid. the case manager, and food stamps.

Now I have no outside help. Sometimes I can only get to the grocery every two weeks. Fortunately I have enough money to keep a well stocked pantry, and apples and onions keep for a long time.

In theory I am under a doctor's care even though I haven't seen her for over a year. Travel is just too difficult and besides, she doesn't do anything anyhow, so why bother? They keep renewing my prescriptions for Florinef and Imitrex, so I guess that means I'm still a patient.

p.s. I just passed 58.7 years a few weeks ago. I guess that means my time is just about up. Oh well. I tried to make a difference while I was able.

I'm 61 and still going strong (-ish), @jimells, and there do seem to be quite a few of us here over 60 (I think at least one over 70), so there is hope!

 

[Hate ME/CFS]

The Coroners report about Mr Hancock dying from natural causes is total b.s. CFIDS/ME patients are more susceptible to undetectable and untreatable cancer, and other cardiovascular diseases.