Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 240 posts

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#121

Post by thomascgalvin »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #113
fernly wrote: post #12

Dubious about the "heart attack" diagnosis, at least as the phrase is usually understood. More likely "Sudden Cardiac Arrest"[1]: "In over half of the cases, however, sudden cardiac arrest occurs without prior symptoms." Like, the pump just stops. You'd feel faint and then be unconscious. [1] https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/sudden-cardiac-dea...

> "Sudden Cardiac Arrest": "In over half of the cases, however, sudden cardiac arrest occurs without prior symptoms." Like, the pump just stops. You'd feel faint and then be unconscious. What a wonderful way to die. No sickness, no disability, no pain. Just turn off when the time comes. I wish everybody could die this way. Not too early preferably.

Seriously. I'm hard pressed to think of a better way to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#122

Post by chki »

pubutil wrote: post #115
Doxin wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: a lot of the symptoms of a panic attack are the same as the symptoms of a heart attack. This comes in especially inconvenient if the focus of your panic attack is fear of a heart attack. It's basically a self-confirming incorrect diagnosis.

This happened to me once, the second time I ever had a panic attack (the first being when I was a toddler). My heart started racing and I hyper focused on it; took my blood pressure and it was a high so I called the advice nurse who told me to have someone take me to the ER. Basically the only way the situation could have been worse is if I’d actually been having a heart attack. I was preparing to accept death at age…

Something very similar happened to me (20, m) recently, I drank too much coffee, felt my heart racing and had an impending sense of doom being worried to the point where I was also (trying to) accept my oncoming death. This was also happening while being on an intercontinental flight which I don't recommend.

In retrospect I also have kind of similar feelings about it, although I'm afraid the experience actually caused me being worried a lot more about some minor health issues in the last year.

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#123

Post by fyfy18 »

rusk wrote: post #116
qwerty456127 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Sudden Cardiac Arrest": "In over half of the cases, however, sudden cardiac arrest occurs without prior symptoms." Like, the pump just stops. You'd feel faint and then be unconscious. What a wonderful way to die. No sickness, no disability, no pain. Just turn off when the time comes. I wish everybody could die this way. Not too early preferably.

Speaking as somebody who lost a loved one this way ... it's very hard on the family. I often wonder about my father's last moments ... did he know what was happening? Did he have any regrets, or any last things he wanted to say to people? For us as a family it was like a bomb going off, and we spent many many years cleaning up the debris, and in some ways nearly two decades later we still are. There are plenty worse…

The death of any loved one is hard on any family, but IMO a quick, relatively painless, death is definately easier. My mother-in-law died from cancer a few years ago, and after many months of pain and constantly in and out of hospitals, when she was finally lying on her deathbed unconcious as her body began to give up, my wife was tasked with making the decision of whether doctors would administer a lethal morphine dose to end her suffering.

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#124

Post by Invictus0 »

rusk wrote: post #116
qwerty456127 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Sudden Cardiac Arrest": "In over half of the cases, however, sudden cardiac arrest occurs without prior symptoms." Like, the pump just stops. You'd feel faint and then be unconscious. What a wonderful way to die. No sickness, no disability, no pain. Just turn off when the time comes. I wish everybody could die this way. Not too early preferably.

Speaking as somebody who lost a loved one this way ... it's very hard on the family. I often wonder about my father's last moments ... did he know what was happening? Did he have any regrets, or any last things he wanted to say to people? For us as a family it was like a bomb going off, and we spent many many years cleaning up the debris, and in some ways nearly two decades later we still are. There are plenty worse…

On the other side of this, I had a relative slowly waste away from cancer. There were no lingering questions, possessions were given away, goodbyes were said, and when the day came, everyone in the family had made peace with it, with the exception of her partner who had to endure the daily emotional burden of her suffering and care. I didn't cry at the funeral: it was as if she had died while still alive. For my relative though, the process was extremely expensive, painful, and undignified: in the end she basically starved to death in anguish, and frankly I think all of the family would have preferred her not to go out in this way.

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#125

Post by qwerty456127 »

fyfy18 wrote: post #123
rusk wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as somebody who lost a loved one this way ... it's very hard on the family. I often wonder about my father's last moments ... did he know what was happening? Did he have any regrets, or any last things he wanted to say to people? For us as a family it was like a bomb going off, and we spent many many years cleaning up the debris, and in some ways nearly two decades later we still are. There are plenty worse…

The death of any loved one is hard on any family, but IMO a quick, relatively painless, death is definately easier. My mother-in-law died from cancer a few years ago, and after many months of pain and constantly in and out of hospitals, when she was finally lying on her deathbed unconcious as her body began to give up, my wife was tasked with making the decision of whether doctors would administer a lethal morphine d…

Very sad to read that. Yet, by the way, why do they always use lethal doses of morphine for euthanasia? I.e. I would strongly prefer a lethal dose of 5-MeO-DMT (which feels like spiritual ascension and dissolution in pure light, union with the universe and non-duality, and then you just forget to breathe in case of a lethal dose) for myself.

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#126

Post by iicc »

echelon wrote: post #32
fernly wrote: post #12

Dubious about the "heart attack" diagnosis, at least as the phrase is usually understood. More likely "Sudden Cardiac Arrest"[1]: "In over half of the cases, however, sudden cardiac arrest occurs without prior symptoms." Like, the pump just stops. You'd feel faint and then be unconscious. [1] https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/sudden-cardiac-dea...

Does this happen in young, healthy individuals? I was reading the Wikipedia article linked in another thread [1], and several of the "sudden" deaths were people in their 40s that appear to have been healthy. Do you feel symptoms, eg. during exercise, that you should listen to so as to inform you to stop whatever activity you're doing? Feeling light-headed, short of breath, blurry vision, etc.? I run and also perform…

Famously footballer Fabrice Muamba had a cardiac arrest while playing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Muamba#Cardiac_arrest_...

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#127

Post by vidarh »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #59
redleader55 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very famous series of books by Isaac Asimov that deals with this problem - The Robots. Basically once humans are able to increase their life span, they become reluctant to take any risks and the become stuck in their own "immortality". It's no different than what the GP says. Weather it's until the end of the universe or just a few hundred years, we still become more risk adverse and less capable of change.

Gonna be honest - once we have backups, I'm totally intending to go into seriously risky behaviors. So this is 100% the opposite of how I intend to live my life.

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [1] describes a post-singularity world where an AI prevents people from dying permanently, and one woman in protest takes up finding creative ways to kill herself (and getting stopped and patched up each time) and turns it into a sport with a following... I'm sure there would be some people that'd take risks to that extreme.

[1] http://www.localroger.com/prime-intellect/ (with the warning that it is pretty gruesome)

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#128

Post by clSTophEjUdRanu »

echelon wrote: post #32
fernly wrote: post #12

Dubious about the "heart attack" diagnosis, at least as the phrase is usually understood. More likely "Sudden Cardiac Arrest"[1]: "In over half of the cases, however, sudden cardiac arrest occurs without prior symptoms." Like, the pump just stops. You'd feel faint and then be unconscious. [1] https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/sudden-cardiac-dea...

Does this happen in young, healthy individuals? I was reading the Wikipedia article linked in another thread [1], and several of the "sudden" deaths were people in their 40s that appear to have been healthy. Do you feel symptoms, eg. during exercise, that you should listen to so as to inform you to stop whatever activity you're doing? Feeling light-headed, short of breath, blurry vision, etc.? I run and also perform…

I'm not a doctor but for some reason I get anxious about this as well. You said you run? My logic is that if I had a heart defect it would have showed itself playing sports growing up or during my time in the service.

A friend of mine knew someone who dropped dead on a hump to the range at Twentynine Palms.

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#129

Post by idclip »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #81
idclip wrote: post #79

“Dropped dead” is, if you ask me, a disrespectful term To dying or passing away. Im not sure why i have a problem with it, but i do.

"dropped his head" != "dropped dead"

Oh my brain skipped that!

Re: A singer apologized, closed his eyes, dropped his head and died onstage

#130

Post by mcv »

fyfy18 wrote: post #123
rusk wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as somebody who lost a loved one this way ... it's very hard on the family. I often wonder about my father's last moments ... did he know what was happening? Did he have any regrets, or any last things he wanted to say to people? For us as a family it was like a bomb going off, and we spent many many years cleaning up the debris, and in some ways nearly two decades later we still are. There are plenty worse…

The death of any loved one is hard on any family, but IMO a quick, relatively painless, death is definately easier. My mother-in-law died from cancer a few years ago, and after many months of pain and constantly in and out of hospitals, when she was finally lying on her deathbed unconcious as her body began to give up, my wife was tasked with making the decision of whether doctors would administer a lethal morphine d…

It varies. My mother and my wife's father died in the same year. He died suddenly of a heart attack. He was gone, no chance to say goodbye.

My mother was diagnosed in the summer with pancreatic cancer, and had only a few months to live. She didn't want chemo, as it was unlikely to do much good, and she didn't want to spend the rest of her life in hospitals. It surprised me how calm she became about everything. She's always been a bit worried about everything, including her health, but now that her health was gone, she found peace. It was just before my parents' 45th anniversary, and she wanted the entire extended family to be there, and they were. We also planned a family weekend away. Originally the third weekend of October, but after my friends warned me that pancreatic cancer can move really quick, we moved it to the first weekend of October. We had a great time, she was fully conscious and happy, and just needed a bit more rest. On the second weekend of October, she was delirious in the hospice where she would die a few days later.

I was very glad we could say goodbye like that.

Post reply on HN