GALVESTON — No one is likely to know whether the 37 hours she spent in a car last week contributed to the death of an island woman.
An autopsy Thursday showed that Carol Johnson, 50, died of a pulmonary embolism shortly after her husband found her lying on the floor of their island home Wednesday morning.
Johnson evacuated the island last week to escape Hurricane Rita. She traveled with her husband for 37 hours before reaching Huntsville, according to reports from the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Pustilnik said physical stress from experiences such as long travel could have deadly delayed effects.
“In general, stress or trauma can start a problem that takes time to propagate,” he said. “It can escalate over time and become a clinical problem, or even a fatal problem.”
However, examiners at Galveston’s University of Texas Medical Branch also found previously undiagnosed cancer in Johnson, among other maladies.
“That’s why the results are indeterminate,” Pustilnik said. “This embolism is as likely to be caused by cancer as it is by 37 hours of travel. We don’t know if the travel caused the problem, exacerbated an existing problem or had nothing to do with the problem.”
