Houston-based rapper BeatKing, also known as Club Godzilla and Justin Riley, has died at age 39. He reportedly fainted during a recording session and was rushed to a hospital, where he was found to have a pulmonary embolism. And unfortunately pulmonary embolisms can kill quickly.
BeatKing first achieved broader attention when his single “Crush” essentially crushed it and went viral in 2010. But arguably his biggest hit was “Then Leave” which not only went viral on social media in 2020 but also didn’t leave Billboard’s Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, making it all the way to Number Three. BeatKing’s work included collaborations with 2 Chainz, Bun B, T-Pain and Ludacris.
A pulmonary embolism is a medical emergency. It’s not the type of thing that you can simply walk off or use vapor rub to treat. It is when a blood clot travels to and blocks an artery that supplies blood to your lungs. Such a clot most often originates in one of the deep veins of your leg, hence the name deep vein thrombosis or DVT for such a clot when it first forms. But less commonly the clot can come from elsewhere in the body.
Your lungs are kind of important because they allow you breathe and stuff, being the place where oxygen gets into your bloodstream and carbon dioxide gets removed from your red blood cells to then be blown out of your mouth and nose. In blocking a pulmonary artery, a pulmonary embolus prevents blood flow to the portion of the lung supplied by that artery, which is clearly not good.
When your lung tissue doesn’t get blood flow and thus oxygen, like any body tissue, it will soon die unless blood flow is quickly restored. Also, when enough pulmonary artery blood flow is blocked by a clot or clots, the pressure in the pulmonary artery can build up more and more. That causes your heart to work even harder to push blood through this higher pressure. If this pressure gets too high, eventually, your heart will essentially say, “Can’t do this anymore” and fail.
These are the reasons why a pulmonary embolism can be life threatening. So be aware of any symptoms that may be suspicious for a pulmonary embolism. The most common ones are sudden unexplained shortness of breath, chest pain or fainting. Other possible symptoms include a cough producing bloody mucus, a rapid or irregular heartbeat, lightheadedness or turning blue. Yeah, turning blue doesn’t tend to be an everything-is-fine thing.
Treatment then is to keep your blood as oxygenated as possible, while trying to get rid of the blood clots and keep more clots from going to the lungs. The doctor may administer clot-dissolving medications or use an invasive procedure to remove the clots. He or she will also start blood thinners to prevent more clots from forming. Time is of the essence. The sooner the treatment, the more likely you are to survive the pulmonary embolism.
Of course, just because you get short of breath reading all of this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a pulmonary embolism. Again the key is that the symptoms are not explainable by increased physical activity or worry. Also, know whether and when you may be at increased risk for DVTs or other blood clot formation.
Blood tends to clot when it stops moving. That’s what allows your wounds to stop bleeding, which is a good things. But every good thing has it’s flip side. Anything that slows the flow of blood can increase the risk of blood clotting. For example, physical inactivity can make it more likely for blood to pool in your legs and thus form DVTs.
There are also conditions that make it more likely for clots to form in general. This includes clotting disorders, heart disease that slows the flow of blood, blood vessel problems that disrupt the flow of blood, kidney disease, Covid-19 and certain cancers or medications. Surgery can make your blood more likely to clot for a while afterwards, typically for the first two or three months after getting general anesthesia. Oh, and there’s smoking. Yep, add increasing blood clot risk to the long list of reasons not to smoke.
