They said the cause of death was arrhythmia, which is a conclusion reached through exclusion. They couldn’t find any other cause so they said her heart became erratic, brought on by stress. But greenperson explained that there are 2 kinds of arrhythmia. Atrial arrhythmia is not usually serious, and she would have been diagnosed with this before now. Ventricular arrhythmia is serious - it’s why Dick Cheney has a pacemaker - and is not brought on by stress; it’s a physical condition created by earlier heart trauma.
Did I butcher that really badly, greenperson?
I can’t remember which Coast Guard document it was in, but it said that if a person is going to have cold water shock that impacts their heart, it will happen within the first 5 minutes after entering the water.
If you want to understand why there are questions, a good point to start at is http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3110483/posts?page=262#262 .
One correction I should make is that the flight times I calculated were based on maximum speed and should have been based on cruising speed, so the flight time from Honolulu should be 25 minutes rather than 15. An addition should be that I can show photos of 5 different women floating in the water with life jackets, and there were only 3 women claimed to be on that flight and supposedly confirmed by the numbers used by the Coast Guard, NTSB, Makani Kai owner Richard Schuman, and pilot Clyde Kawasaki. So they have all hidden the existence of AT LEAST one woman on that flight.
There’s way more that could/should be added but that’s a pretty important thing which confirms that the 4 above-mentioned entities are deceiving us at best.
“Atrial arrhythmia is not usually serious, and she would have been diagnosed with this before now. Ventricular arrhythmia is serious - it’s why Dick Cheney has a pacemaker - and is not brought on by stress; it’s a physical condition created by earlier heart trauma.
Did I butcher that really badly, greenperson?”
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For the most part, you got it right. I’m no doctor but palpitations (which everybody has at some point) are most often benign. Premature beats (perceived as skipped beats) can be atrial or ventricular. If somebody has a problem with them, then a 24-hour monitoring will determine what kind they are and they’re almost always benign. The person should lay off caffeine, or chocolate, or whatever meds might be causing them. Stress, too. Even dieting.
But stress causes BENIGN palpitations. Someone predisposed to ventricular fibrillation (which is far different from tachycardia or skipped beats) will have obvious problems visible on a cardiogram. If there’s a doctor in the house, then that person can probably explain it better.
If Fuddy had regular checkups, and she probably did, being health director, then surely any preexisting heart condition would be known to the doctor and the coroner would also know. Her brother would probably know, too.
(This is the first I’ve seen of this thread, so I can’t speak in context, because I haven’t read it yet.)
On the other hand, if she had a heart attack brought on by stress, that’s not surprising in a woman of her age and weight. She may have had “hardening of the arteries” and may have been ripe for a heart attack. But that should have been immediately visible at autopsy.
She was a pear-shaped person, and somebody like that isn’t necessarily unhealthy and at risk for heart attacks, or so they tell us. Her doctor would know if she had high cholesterol or diabetes.
They didn’t say she had a heart attack, however, which means they didn’t see elevated enzymes in her blood or any other indicator of a heart attack. They said, instead, that she died from arrhythmia caused by stress. But again, they can’t diagnose arrhythmia in a non-beating heart, so they just pulled this one out of their rears, imho.
It’s a mystery and probably will remain so.