39-Year-Old Canadian Man Dies From Aneurysm After Giving Up On ‘Six Hour’ ER Wait

On December 4, Adam Burgoyne thought he might be having a heart attack.

“Pain in the chest on the left side, nausea, clammy skin,” the 39-year-old wrote on X the following day while discussing his self-described “health scare” the previous evening.

“Tried to just breathe a bit and see what happened,” he wrote, “but it started to get worse so I went to the ER.”

Things went downhill from there. The doctors did a couple tests, he said, determined that it “wasn’t a heart attack,” and then had him wait for hours before receiving any further tests or treatment.

“Once they made sure I wasn’t dying I was thrown out into the waiting room,” he said. “6 hours later I said f*ck it and went home.”

When another user opined that the medical staff “should have done blood work for Troponin test,” Burgoyne said that he was only given an echocardiogram and blood pressure test (the latter of which was “apparently normal”).

“It was ECG and BP only, that was enough for them to basically triage me as ‘he can wait indefinitely’ level.”

“They didn’t even do any blood work or x-rays,” he wrote in another post. “I suppose that might have happened had I been willing to wait 18 hours more,”

“Canadian health care, folks. Best in the world,” he quipped.

After Burgoyne wrote on X that he was still “not sure what it was,” several users asked if it might have been a panic attack.

“I’ve had panic attacks before when I was younger and this seemed completely different to those,” he said to one. “Can’t rule it out but it’s not my assumption.”

“I didn’t feel panicked at all,” he told another user. “It felt purely physical.”

“I get that it could have been a panic attack,” he said in response to a third commenter who brought up the possibility, “but I’ve had those before years ago and it was a very very different sensation. It just seems like it’s one of those ‘well I dunno and [I’m] not going to look further into it but yeah let’s go with that’ conditions.”

Aneurysm

Within 48 hours of his ER visit, Adam Burgoyne was dead. According to his friend Holly, who wrote a detailed tribute, the cause of death was an aortic aneurysm.

“On December 6, 2024, our beautiful son, brother, and uncle Adam suddenly left this earth,” Burgoyne’s loved ones said in his obituary (archived here).

“His many family and friends will miss his sarcastic humour, his quick wit, his deeply felt convictions, his smarts, and his way of cutting through any stormy situation to reveal the core of what really matters.”

“On the cusp of his 40th birthday, an aneurysm took him from us.”

“Had he received a timely CT scan, he could still be alive today as they would have seen the aortic aneurysm,” commented Dr. Jack Lam, a board certified anesthesiologist and pain management physician. “So sad. Condolences to his loved ones.”

Per the Mayo Clinic:

Imaging tests can be used to confirm or screen for a thoracic aortic aneurysm… CT uses X-rays to create cross-sectional images of the body, including the aorta. It can show the size and shape of an aneurysm

‘Fit, Healthy,’ Quadruple-Jabbed Athlete

As news of Burgoyne’s death spread on X, people began wondering about his vaccination status, given the abundant evidence of widespread adverse reactions and deaths among those who received the mRNA injections.

“Many have been quick to ask whether Adam’s death was related to the COVID vaccines,” his friend Holly said in the aforementioned article. “He told me he had been vaccinated, and boosted, receiving a total of four shots.”

“Whether they contributed to his death is a question we cannot answer—and likely never will,” she added.

“What we do know is that a wonderful young man—a fit, healthy athlete in the prime of his life—died suddenly, leaving everyone who loved him bereft of answers that could ever make it seem fair.”

“I wish I had something more definitive—something more comforting—but I do not.”

Six Years Clean and Sober

Burgoyne struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction earlier in his life, something that he discussed during a 2020 episode of the Two For Tea Podcast.

The National Post’s Chris Lambe, who reviewed the episode, writes that Burgoyne’s problems with alcohol began around age 22, and apparently only got worse from there:

Drinking became a real problem in his mid-twenties, when he started to consume alcohol alone. “I was less good at keeping it under wraps socially.”

Some friends stopped hanging out with Burgoyne. “They didn’t want to be around my antics.”

By the time Burgoyne hit 30, he was buying large bottles of high-proof beer in corner stores. “I was drinking about two of those a night. I am surprised that my liver still functions today.”

Around 2017-2018, Burgoyne hit rock bottom:

At the age of 32, someone offered him a glass pipe holding crystal methamphetamine.

After trying it three times over more than a month, “I knew that I had made a very grave error,” Burgoyne said, noting his addiction to crystal meth “completely supplanted” his addiction to alcohol.

Crystal meth put him on a downward spiral that made the problem impossible to ignore.

“That was a really lovely gift wrapped in really ugly paper,” Burgoyne said. “It forced me to confront what I had been denying.”

In October of the following year, at age 33, he apparently left the drugs and alcohol behind for good.

Six years sober 💪🏻 pic.twitter.com/6x6oZP39qE

— Ⓐ (@big_figgot) October 12, 2024

“Adam worked very hard to leave difficult times in the rear view mirror, and succeeded beyond all measure,” his family says in his obituary.

“He had found a loving relationship, rose quickly to great heights in a new career, and proudly showed off the results of his ongoing fitness journey.”

“On October 12, 2024, Adam marked 6 years clean and sober and continued to support others in their recovery journeys. We were, and are still, so incredibly proud of him.”