Hi, I?m Helena and I?m 37. Lost my husband August 12th this year. A sudden death that we didn?t expect at all. A sunny beautiful day turned into a nightmare. We were out swimming at a lake and my husband took our 4 year old son on his back for some swimming. At the time I washed our youngest daughter in the water. Suddenly I look up and see my husband swimming. He looks a bit tired but nothing out of the ordinary. I attend to my daughter again and the next time (maybe 30 secs later) I look up my husband is gone. He is nowhere to be seen, I can only see my son trying to remain floating in the water. At first I think its some kind of stupid joke where my husband is hiding under the water but after a couple of seconds i realise that it?s not a joke. My husband is gone under the water and my son is silently struggling to keep his head above the waterline.
I call 112 (we live in Sweden) and at the same time i send some people in the water looking for Axel (my husband). The ambulance and rescuers arrive and we have still not found him. He has now been under water for approx 15 min.
The get him out of the water and start a 3 hour long resuscitation treatment. Axel is pronounced dead at 7.45 pm.
The post mortem examination shows that Axel had a severe blockage of the left anterior descending artery (also called LAD) and according to the coroner that blockage probably had something to do with his death. The fact that he was in water when it happened and the long resuscitation made it more complicated to see exactly how it went wrong. The heart also had severe signs of oxygen deprivation and the coroner thought that some of these was the result of blockage of LAD.
I have three children, 8,4 and 2 years old. They have lost their father and their father lost his life. Axel was an intelligent, creative and kind man. He could talk to anybody and most people really liked him, He had a great job and was a loving father. He had so many things going on and suddenly it all stopped. His memories and everything he planned just disappeared and now I find myself standing here with three children. I have a good social network and my in-laws are just great. No financial problems but I miss him so much and it?s now that I begin to realise that he is gone. Gone forever.
