George Michael

[deux]

Mar 8, 2017 23:33:12 GMT -4 Binky said:

HIV can also cause the heart conditions that killed him - I'm surprised that hasn't been discussed in the coverage of his death. I don't think it's shameful if he had HIV/AIDS - but the resounding silence and avoidance of the topic is odd.

He claimed he'd had 500 sex partners over the course of seven years. I wouldn't be surprised if he was indeed HIV positive.

I'm glad that he died of natural causes. His last boyfriend Fadi Fawaz was somehow shady (slept in his car the night GM died, the mysterious tweets, possibly a gold-digger). I really thought he was involved somehow.

[forever1267]

My cousin had a fatal heart attack at 44. He was a basketball and track and field coach, happily married, 4 kids, non smoker and social drinker. But we have cardiac issues on the men's side of the family. It was just his time, for no apparent reason.

I would imagine Cocaine was probably an undue influence on George's heart. But it could have just been "one of those things". Sad, in either way, but a good way to go.

[discoprincess]

Mar 8, 2017 20:14:15 GMT -4 Ladybug said:

Drug abuse can also cause permanent damage to your heart, and we know that he struggled with addiction. But it is nice to know it wasn't directly caused by an overdose or something and I hope that is a comfort for his family.

(Possible) cases in point: Whitney Houston and Rick James. (Rick James officially died of a heart attack.)

I was surprised to find in Whitney's autopsy results that she had "atherosclerotic heart disease".

Mar 9, 2017 0:30:58 GMT -4 Spinderella said:

I would think if he did have HIV/AIDS, that would have been listed somewhere in the report. It didn't have to be an underlying cause or even a secondary cause, but they list anything that could contribute to death or was in the system of the deceased. That sounds cold, but I've seen my fair share of death certificates around the entire country from long ago to present day and one that's more recent showed a suicide by a gunshot wound and listed that the deceased had cancer.

Just putting that out there.

That's what I'm saying!

On LSA, there are several people who seemed to be convinced George Michael was HIV+ and that people behind the official report were being prompted to cover that up. (Why would officials do that? It didn't work with Liberace here in the States, and that was over 25 years ago, when the stigma of HIV/AIDS seemed to be much more pronounced.)

[Nysha]

He could have been HIV+, but if it didn't contribute to his death, would it have been made public?

[chonies]

I guess it might have been if it were a proximal cause of his death. Bad example, but if you have diabetes but die in a car accident, the diabetes is a matter of your ostensibly private health record, not the death certificate, because it had nothing to do with your death, unless you were driving and crashed the car because of something related to the condition. There's sadly nothing out of the ordinary about a man in his fifties dying of a heart attack, especially if he has done hard living.

[Ella]

I saw a picture of him just before he died. He was with Elton John and he looked like he had gained a lot of weight. Also years of drugs and alcohol tends to wear on the heart.

[Deleted]

Sudden death by "natural causes" can be as simple as a previously unknown heart condition. I'm reminded of the sudden, awful death of Joe Strummer, who died in 2002 at age 50 two days before Christmas. He was sitting on his sofa reading a newspaper, while his household carried on around him, he was found just like that, sitting with the paper on his lap. The autopsy discovered a previously undetected heart defect. It took me years to get over his death.

[chiqui]

That is terrible. I knew Joe died young but didn't know that was the cause.

[Oxynia]

Mar 11, 2017 19:36:39 GMT -4 @imeldamarcos said:

Sudden death by "natural causes" can be as simple as a previously unknown heart condition. I'm reminded of the sudden, awful death of Joe Strummer, who died in 2002 at age 50 two days before Christmas. He was sitting on his sofa reading a newspaper, while his household carried on around him, he was found just like that, sitting with the paper on his lap. The autopsy discovered a previously undetected heart defect. It took me years to get over his death.

I still haven't gotten over it...that hit me really hard.

[divasahm]

Mar 12, 2017 22:22:13 GMT -4 Oxynia said:

Mar 11, 2017 19:36:39 GMT -4 @imeldamarcos said:

Sudden death by "natural causes" can be as simple as a previously unknown heart condition. I'm reminded of the sudden, awful death of Joe Strummer, who died in 2002 at age 50 two days before Christmas. He was sitting on his sofa reading a newspaper, while his household carried on around him, he was found just like that, sitting with the paper on his lap. The autopsy discovered a previously undetected heart defect. It took me years to get over his death.

I still haven't gotten over it...that hit me really hard.

Poor ds1 happened to be in the car the other day when Rock The Casbah came on--she was subjected to a half-hour soliloquy on how the Clash spent most of my college years in Texas, how Joe Ely made up the Spanish descant to Should I Stay Or Should I Go one night while standing in the wings watching Strummer and the boys open for him, and the night I got dragged by my sorority grand-big to the now-legendary show at Austin's City Coliseum and became a fan forever. (Seriously, if everyone who says they were at the show had actually been there, they would have had to have it at the football stadium on three consecutive nights.) Most of the Rock The Casbah video was shot in Austin, specifically West Campus, the area where I lived, so next time ds1 is home, we'll watch the video and I'll tell her what's there now.

Oh, guess where she'll be living next fall? The Casbah. In West Campus. Three blocks west of the former site of the Posse, which was prominently featured in the video...

Back on topic--guess whose mom found her "Choose Life" tee in the garage this weekend while going through the remnants of three different estates?