John Q. Trojanowski Dies at 75; Changed Understanding of Brain Diseases
And, she added, he never had close friends but her. In part, she said, it was because he moved around so often when he was growing up. But also because they were so close. “We were very happy together,” she said. “He was very content just to spend time with me.”
According to Dr. Lee, the end of Dr. Troyanovsky’s life was difficult. He began to stumble while climbing stairs, waking up in the middle of the night and wandering around. After a fall the day before his birthday in December, he asked to be admitted to the hospital, where scans showed deep bruises pressing on his spinal cord.
He underwent surgery twice to remove blood clots, but he remained paralyzed and needed mechanical ventilation. He began to get infected, and each time the infection cleared up, he got infected again.
After three weeks of stasis, Dr. Troyanovsky and Dr. Lee discussed his future.
“I said, ‘You’re not going to the hospice and you can’t stay here forever,'” she recalls. “You know you will get infected, and even if you don’t, you will be paralyzed from the neck down.”
Dr. Trojanowsky decided he wanted to stop life support. He asked to remove the artificial respiration tube for him.
According to Dr. Lee, he died two and a half hours later.
In addition to his wife, Dr. Troyanovsky is survived by his brothers John, Davis, and Mark, as well as his sisters Lynn Troyanovsky, Annie Troyanovsky, and Janet Meyer.
