Tomorrow marks the five month mark since my husband's sudden and still-shocking-to-me death. We still do not have answers, and my shock is starting to give way to a small but healthy dose of outrage.
How is it possible that after five months, after over 150 days of waiting, our family still does not have closure?
How is it possible that someone like Bobbi Kristina Brown sits in a coma for nine months, but her autopsy is complete and released to the rabid public within two days? Does Bobbi Kristina's status as daughter of has-been 80's pop stars make the cause of her death so much more important than the millions of people waiting ahead of her family? (Yes, I know she died in Georgia and we are in North Carolina, but you get my point).
Something has GOT to change, and it must start with us. The "system" is obviously broken.
Chris's body was sent to the state medical examiner's office because of a serious of bad luck events. Ha! We won't go directly to the point of a 45 year old man dying suddenly at home being bad luck enough.
He was sent automatically for an autopsy because he was at home, and not under doctor's care (ie, healthy) and still considered young by death's standards. It happened late at night, so the Davidson County NC office was already closed. And, even though a regional medical examiner's office was not more than 6 miles from us, because we literally lived 2/10th of a mile within the Davidson County border, the jurisdiction became Raleigh.
All of this leads to the perfect storm of Chris being sent to the slowest, most backlogged, understaffed, and under apologetic medical staff in the state.
On the day after his death, I was told that the autopsy results would take about 8 weeks, or 12 at the most. That was before our funeral director realized he had been sent to Raleigh, where the timeline immediately became "at least 3 months". After three months, the timeline was modified to "up to six months". The last time I spoke with someone, I was told it could be 8 months.
I am seriously concerned that I should be preparing for a battle.
I simply want answers. I desperately NEED answers. I know most people can understand this on a surface level, but the woman I used to be...the woman who tried her best to save her husband's life on May 20th, 2015 needs to know that she did all she could. I need some form of closure from the worst 15 minutes of my life. I need to know that (please God) it was not preventable. I need to know it's not something genetic that I need to think about for my kids.
Tell me why my needs are falling to the bottom of a stack of paperwork on the chief medical examiner's desk?
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