A young woman collapsed and perished at the end of a road race that she’d run last year with no difficulties. Frantic, expert attempts to resuscitate her were unavailing, and only on autopsy was it clear why: she’d had a massive abdominal hemmorrhage. She’d have been just as dead if she’d already been in the ER when it happened.
The Scranton mother of three who died after completing a half-marathon suffered an internal hemorrhage, the Lackawanna County coroner has reported.
Lindsay Doherty took up running a couple of years ago and trained for Sunday’s Scranton Half Marathon.
At the end of the 13.1-mile race, the 36-year-old married mother of three young children crossed the finish line and collapsed.
Medics rushed to Doherty’s side and tried to resuscitate her. She was taken by ambulance to Geisinger Community Medical Center’s emergency room, where she died a short time later.
Lackawanna County Coroner Tim Rowland told The Times-Tribune that an autopsy Monday showed Doherty suffered an intra-abdominal hemorrhage. He ruled the manner of her death as natural.
via Married mom of 3 dies at end of Pennsylvania half marathon.
Death comes to us all, and no one is guaranteed his or her Biblical three score and ten. She was a religious believer who put her labor where her faith was, raising money for her church, and perhaps that will be some small comfort to her family in this time of shock and sorrow.
And may all of us live our lives in the knowledge that they’re not guaranteed.
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
9 thoughts on “When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Half Marathons”
I knew there was a good reason for me to not be running and all that. Exercise can kill ya!
It’s a reminder of how fragile life really is.
I’d like to suggest that a counterpoint to these articles Hognose likes to put up might be “Times when death was taking a coffee break…”, because there’s a shed-load of stuff out there where you’re left going “How the f**k did that not kill them…?!!?”.
There are literally some people wandering around alive today whose brushes with death would make Rasputin jealous… And, they lived.
Makes you wonder, sometimes, who is really running things in this universe of ours. If there is such a thing as an involved deity, one who orchestrates everything from a falling sparrow to the manner of each of our deaths, I’m afraid that that entity apparently has a rather macabre and very dark sense of humor. At least, from where I’m sitting.
You ever watch that show “Dead Like Me”? Grim reapers with post-it notes meeting up at a waffle restaurant. Some of the episodes weren’t that great but still a funny show.
I have survived some freaky stuff, including a lightning strike at about 6 feet away. Still trying to figure out how/why I received mulligans.
A Triple-A (abdominal aortic aneurysm) will kill you deader than canned tuna in about 10-20 beats of your heart. (Just ask Zombie John Ritter.)
If you were in surgery, opened up, with a picnic cooler of O- or type & screened blood handy, you’d still have less than a 50% chance.
On the bright side, at least she finished the race. Imagine the double whammy of abruptly checking out, and 50 yards short.
The point of life is to live it.
Sounded like AAA to me as well. Kinda weird in a 36-yo woman though.
[annoying PSA goes here]: Risk factors for an aneurysmal (dilated) abdominal aorta include greater age, male sex, white race, smoking. The first three are nonmodifiable risk factors (the former Bruce Jenner aside), but the final one is definitely modifiable. Put that crap down. Spend the money saved on ammo.
In addition to Mike_C’s list, I was taught tall thin folks, esp women, were at risk for dissecting AA, abdominal or intrathoracic? This demographic would include a lot of young, fit runners.
DaveP
I have been told that smoking and the birth control pill are a nasty combo for the heart also. Thoughts?
-John M.
Smoking is absolutely bad from a cardiovascular disease (CVD) standpoint; markedly increases risk of both heart attack and stroke.
With oral contraceptive pills (OCP, i.e. birth control pills) it’s more of a “it depends” situation because there are different formulations of OCPs which seem to have varying effects. Some raise blood pressure slightly (and higher BP is a continuous risk factor — as in there is no threshold effect — for CVD in general) for example, but not all. Overall OCPs probably increase risk for CVD, but one also needs to bear in mind that baseline CVD risk is generally low in women of childbearing age, so there’s that. In addition to potential badness on the arterial side (which is what we generally worry about in terms of CVD) OCPs definitely increase risk of venous thromboembolism, or blood clots, on the venous side.
My personal feeling is that the best things one can do for one’s heart (and cardiovascular system in general) are:
0. pick the right parents (sorry, too late for that one)
1. don’t smoke (quitting always helps; while there may be cumulative damage from prior smoking, hardly anyone is “so far gone it doesn’t matter any more”)
2. maintain a healthy weight
3. get some damn exercise (which ties in with #2)
4. if you need medications, take them (If you have side effects a good doc should work with you to find another medication, not just tell you to suck it up. a) Not all side-effects are “class effects” meaning that if you can’t tolerate e.g. rosuvastatin, doesn’t necessarily mean that simvastatin, or pravastatin, won’t work for you. b) if one class truly is intolerable, there can be work arounds in many cases. c) with blood pressure, it often takes 2-4 drugs to get optimal control. No, we don’t get a bonus for each pill you’re on. We usually do the multidrug thing for hypertension because most of the bang for the buck is at a lower dose for any given drug. IOW the marginal increase in BP control if you go from say lisinopril 10 mg to 40mg is small, but the chance of a side effect is much larger at 40 than at 10. So people get put on several drugs at low/moderate doses than a single drug slammed to the rails.)
#2 is important because obesity leads to impaired glucose tolerance (sort of pre-diabetes) and diabetes mellitus. IGT and DM are not just “sugar” diseases. They also adversely affect the heart, brain, kidneys, etc, through increased risk of atherosclerosis and endothelial dysfunction among other things. We’ve gotten much better (as a society) with control of blood pressure and cholesterol and thus reducing CVD risk, but obesity-related problems are erasing those gains.
Sorry for the OT (not that this is the first time, mea culpa).