*Okay… Here’s What Happened*

Okay… got the okay to tell what Patty’s cause of death was: pulmonary embolism, most likely. (No autopsy was required even though it was an unattended death because of the recent surgery and her myriad health complications.) She had been being treated for a while for blood clots, especially in her neck. I’m sure she had to stop taking that a little while before the surgery. The feeling is that due either to the surgery or “just because,” one of the clots traveled to her lung and she was gone. It would have happened pretty quickly.

It was as simple as that. There was no exciting drama that occurred. It was not a sensational thing. I’m sure my vagueness maybe added fuel to what I can only call “conspiracy theories” about what happened to her. It wasn’t alcohol related, as a couple of people asked me. Patty didn’t really drink much, and on the few occasions that she did she wasn’t drunk. Sure, she slurred her speech over the phone and even in person at times. She was on prescribed pain killers (which, hold your horses, she did NOT abuse), taking them as written by her doctors, which made her loopy at times. And before anyone jumps at that, no: the medication had absolutely nothing to do with her death, either.

It was a fluke, a freak incident, an existing medical condition most likely exacerbated by the recent surgery, one that there was no way to predict if and when it would occur.

In the end, it doesn’t matter to me what took her away. What matters is that she is gone and I and everyone else have to go on without her, without that fantastic, amazing, supportive friendship and love that only Patty was capable of giving so freely and unconditionally.