The shock and sadness at Daz’s death remains, of course it does. The dark skies this brings to us all are chased with the light of remembering brighter days with Daz.
This is Wasdale, the sort of landscape where Daz was in his element,
We now know that Daz died from a rare heart condition, Left Ventricular Hypertrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy, the same condition that struck footballer Fabrice Muamba earlier this year. It is a rare condition, there is more information here, on a website for a foundation set up in memory of John Taylor, a fell runner and international athlete who also died of cardiomyopathy in 2002. There is something very difficult about understanding this condition, we can read and understand the science, yes, but not the emotions it raises, it just flies in the face of all we are told about exercise ‘keeping a healthy heart’. I think fell runners in particular will have difficulty with that.
I notice on the John Taylor foundation page, that one of the external links is to CRY, Cardiac Risk in the Young. Some years ago I heard Paddy Jelen, talking about the death of her daughter, she did so very movingly and passionately in her quest to raise awareness of her daughters rare and often misdiagnosed heart condition, Long QT3. At first I hesitated to post the links here, thinking we’d really all read enough ‘sad stuff’ on the Internet in the last few days, but thought better of it. If Paddy can talk about it, I’d be a wuss not to post it.
Go read, please.
(Spud the dog will be back to his regular Sunday postings, some Sunday soon.)
Uphilldowndale 