This is what killed John Ritter. Don’t know that there’s any way to see it coming, although maybe someone more knowledgeable can comment.
By the time you feel symptoms that alarm you enough to seek expert medical help it’s likely too late. These are treated successfully most often after discovering by accident while looking for something else or by screening tests at a lucky moment. You can be IN a hospital, have an artery dissect and be unsaveable, unfortunately.
Pops literally dropped dead. An autopsy performed on the day of his death determined that his history of coronary artery disease led to a myocardial infarction (heart attack) and ventricular fibrillation with the immediate cause being an occlusive coronary thrombosis in the left anterior descending artery resulting from a ruptured cholesterol plaque. Tim Russert died from the same... walking into a hotel lobby, muttered “what’s happening” and dropped dead.
It’s not uncommon and it’s quick.
People young and old drop dead every day,there’s no mystery to it.
My dad was all of 63. Lived a tough life, TB took his father, he was fostered at 12, his mother was crazy, she died at 97. The depression, WWII, Korea, Vietnam... a hard life. Then Bam! Gone. I never really knew him, it stirs my memories sometimes.
When it is said “life is short” that’s not a lie or a conspiracy. That’s the truth the greater percentage of the time.
John Ritter had an aortic artery dissection which usually kills you. Not the same thing at all.
Acute aortic aneurysm. Similar to dissection...only slower
..when there is a separation of the inner artery wall from the outer arterial wall and it splits,and the blood pressure on that split keeps making the split longer and longer...the outer lining of the artery balloons out and finally bursts. Lucille Ball died of AAA
IMHO.
A friend of mine had a defective abdominal aorta and heart valve replaced in emergency surgery. His annual physical was uneventful, but he turned back at the door on his way out to ask his doctor why, a week or so before, he had briefly felt dizziness, a warm sensation, and pain in his chest. As it was, the doctor correctly suspected that was a warning sign that his abdominal aorta had ballooned out and would soon rupture and kill him. By that evening, my friend was in the hospital and having surgery that saved his life.