It’s been over a month since Bob Saget’s sudden and mysterious death, and only last week was the cause revealed: It was the result of head trauma. Medical experts, the comic, actor, and filmmaker’s family revealed, “have concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep.” Now we’re learning more about the nature of the accident, and it’s even worse than previously thought.
As per The New York Times, an autopsy report concluded that Saget “fractured his skull in several places and caused bleeding across both sides of his brain.” It was not, as previously assumed, that it was just a bump on the head. Instead it was, brain doctors said, an “unmistakably serious set of injuries that would at the very least have probably left someone confused.”
Saget’s body was discovered on Jan. 9 in a Florida hotel room outside of Orlando. At the time little was known about what could have caused the fatal injury, though experts were quick to rule out drugs and alcohol. It’s still unclear what happened that could have caused such a severe injury, though it was likely some kind of tumble.
“It is most probable that the decedent suffered an unwitnessed fall backwards and struck the posterior aspect of his head,” read a report by Dr. Joshua Stephany, chief medical examiner of Orange and Osceola counties in Florida.
It seems Saget could have hit his head just hard enough and in the wrong place to cause such severe cranial injuries. Emergency physician Dr. Jeffrey Bazarian told NYT that what he experienced is “like an egg cracking,” and that it you “hit it in one spot” that “it can crack from the back to the front.”
As for the claim that Saget simply brushed it off and went to sleep, that, Dr. Bazarian said, is unlikely, adding, “I doubt he was lucid.”
Still, how did he get so severe an injury. Some neurosurgeons said that his injury seemed like the type one accrues from falling a great height. One doctor told NYT, “This is something I find with someone with a baseball bat to the head, or who has fallen from 20 or 30 feet.”
And yet the autopsy saw no injuries to other parts of Saget’s body.
Still, while there were no drugs or alcohol found in his system, there were signs of Clonazepam, commonly known as Klonopin, a benzodiazepine used to treat panic attacks and prevent seizures, as well as Trazodone, an antidepressant. There’s no indication that either might have contributed to his injuries, but doctors say they can make people sleepy and could contribute to a fall. Saget also had an enlarged heart as well as signs of COVID from a recent PCR test, though neither reportedly contributed to his death.
Saget had an unusual and fruitful career. To many, he was the warm paternal figure of Full House and the affable host of America’s Funniest Home Videos. He moonlit as one seriously dirty comedian, who directed the hilariously nasty (though sweet) Norm Macdonald vehicle Dirty Work. On top of all the warm memoriams, his longtime Full House co-star John Stamos pointed out that he wound up getting in “one last d*ck joke” after he died.
(Via NYT)
