I've always considered my journey one, long, life lesson.  I learn something new every day.  But since about age forty, I pay attention.  I keep myself open.  I listen.  But I'm also always trying to figure things out.  The writer in me always wants details.  I want questions answered.

So therefore, when my son, Shawn, passed away suddenly eleven days ago, I had questions.  Yes......he had lung cancer.  But he had no metastasis.  (For which I'm grateful)  The cancer remained in the right lung, although just recently it had spread to the left airway.  He did develop an infection on the Friday before he passed away on Sunday.  However, I had just spoken to him on the phone four hours before.  Yes, he was quite sick and in a lot of pain.  We thought it was cancer-related.  But now, I know that wasn't the definitive cause of his pain and not feeling well.

When I got the death certificate this past Monday, I was shocked.  I fully expected to see "cause of death" as respiratory arrest or even something cancer-related.  But no.  It said:  Hypertensive cardiac disease.  Sorry, I'm an RN and this made no sense to me.  Even the funeral director was baffled.  I waited a few days and yesterday, I called the medical examiner who had performed the autopsy.

He was extremely kind, sensitive and somewhat informative.  He said that Shawn's heart weighed 500 grams.  The normal is around 300, so therefore, he had an enlarged heart. When I asked what this was caused from he said, "hypertension."  I went on to tell him that I have all his lab reports from Moffitt and he ran a low BP......100/60 on one of them and they were very recent.  He said again it was caused from hypertension.  But like a dog with a bone........Mom was not satisfied.

So this morning I did my own research.  And I found my answer on the Mayo Clinic website.  Enlarged heart can be caused from radiation.  Bingo!  I knew I'd found the correct reason.  Shawn was diagnosed in March of 2009 at the University of Kentucky, as he'd been working in that area.  He had extensive, aggressive radiation all of that summer.  So much so, that when he came here in Nov. and was seen at Shands we were told they absolutely could not do surgery to remove the tumor, because his right lung was like cement.  Caused from radiation.  So the enlarged heart from radiation now makes sense.

And so......where does this new info leave me?  Well, first of all, I feel everything happens precisely the way its supposed to.  Perhaps the sudden and fast way he died has prevented him from a very unpleasant road ahead.  But the one thing that I have most learned from this life lesson is:   We truly have NO control!  None.  Whatsoever. 

Imagine......in the end, it wasn't even lung cancer that took his life.  Which is something that nobody could have predicted.

Another piece of information that gives me a bit more comfort......................