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> The neighborhood mail carrier was the one who’d called the police. Every day, Brown would wait for her in a chair by his door, and the two would exchange plea
by gwern 8y ago
> The neighborhood mail carrier was the one who’d called the police. Every day, Brown would wait for her in a chair by his door, and the two would exchange pleasantries. But for the past five days, there’d been no sign of him. Police did a welfare check and discovered his body in a pool of dried blood by the toilet. Members of the coroner’s office who were dispatched to the house determined that he died of a stroke, but not before breaking his nose in a nasty fall.
Another example of how elder falling is responsible for an astounding amount of morbidity & mortality.
- BrandonMarc 8y agoIs it certain the stroke came before the fall? It may have caused the fall.
- Aeolun 8y agoThat’s how I read it. He had a stroke, fell, broke his nose, and then died of the stroke. The nose just sucks, but if you’re already having a stroke...
- gwern 8y agoI don't think there's any way to know for certain post-mortem; but at least in all the descriptions I've read of strokes, causing a sudden fall within a split-second seems unusually abrupt, while falling is an extremely common and ordinary event in the elderly and having a stroke after hitting your head so hard as to break your nose doesn't seem like too surprising a thing.