It seems like it was just New Year’s Day and, here we are at the final SNGF of January.
Randy Seaver, of course, has a challenge ready for us:
1) What is the most unusual cause of death you have discovered for your ancestors?
I don’t have to go back very far in my family tree to answer this question. My grandfather, Vernon Tarbox Adams, died on 7 December 1968 at the young age of 69 years.
I had last seen him during the summer of 1968 at my grandparents’ camp in Maine and Grandfather was healthy and busy as usual completing projects around the cottage.
Grandmother called my mother in November and said Grandfather was in the hospital and the doctors thought he had had a stroke, but he kept getting worse even though there was no evidence of further strokes.
He was actually hospitalized for weeks before he died.
While his death certificate says he died of “multiple brain infarcts,” gallstones (!) and, finally, pneumonia, Grandmother wanted to know what really happened to him so she requested an autopsy.
Grandfather was a Navy vet, but Grandmother was quite surprised when Navy doctors came knocking on her door soon after.
It turns out that Grandfather died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and he was only the third documented case in the 20th century. Although CJD has some similarities to Mad Cow Disease, they aren’t the same thing, but do share symptoms of mental deterioration and break down leading to death, caused by prions.
How he became infected is unknown, but one possibility is by eating contaminated meat. Grandfather worked for Western Union as a regional manager, which meant he traveled frequently up and down the East Coast. Prions can stay dormant for years, so if meat was the cause, there is no way to tell where he might have eaten it.
There is no family history of CJD, so heredity isn’t a factor. Some people come down with CJD for no apparent reason, which might include Grandfather.
Regardless of the source, it is always fatal. Grandfather was a wonderful person who died way too young of a terrible disease.
As always, thank you Randy, for this week’s SNGF challenge.
Wow, that was unusual. Why did the Navy doctors come knocking on the door? What did they want to know?
I guess whoever did the autopsy notified the US Navy because he was a veteran and CJD was so rare. They wanted to interview my grandmother about all the symptoms that Grandfather had, when they began, etc.