My friend Jane

Written by Rachel Chippendale in loving memory of Jane Assie Hiney 1981 – 2020.

It’s been two-and-a-half years since my beautiful friend Jane passed away suddenly.

At 8pm I received a good night Snapchat from her – she was happy and relaxed and we’d planned to meet for scootering with our kids the next morning. By midnight she was gone forever, falling unconscious in her sleep, and never waking up.

The sudden loss of a loved one has its own type of grief – how can someone that is such an integral part of your life be here one day and not the next. The sadness and life-rebuilding that surrounds sudden loss for family left behind is profound.

I try to make Jane proud every day and think of the things she’d have liked others to know. One of those things is how Jane actually died and what others should be aware of regarding heart health and hereditary conditions.

Jane died from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and her death falls under the umbrella term of SADS - sudden adult death syndrome. Her condition is largely genetic and often has no symptoms - here she was with the kindest and most joyous of hearts and little did we know that she’d been walking around with a broken one. This condition is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in children, the under-40s and even athletes. My basic understanding is that the heart overcompensates its defects by working harder, and by doing so becomes more ine cient at pumping blood because of muscle thickening, which can lead to cardiac arrest (di erent to a heart attack, which is caused by arterial narrowing or blockage, caused by a combination of both heredity and poor lifestyle choices). Jane was fit and extremely health conscious.

Our family history since Jane passed has become somewhat of a fascination for me. We had two sets of the same greatgrandparents. Our nans were sisters on one side (Duggans) and our grandmother and grandfather were brother and sister on the other (Hineys). On one side of our family, Jane’s grandfather passed of cardiac-related issues at 39, leaving behind three boys aged three, six and eight. On the other side, our greatgrandmother fell asleep next to one of her daughters and never woke up, leaving behind eight children, the youngest of who was just eight months old. It was the early 1900s and her exact cause of death was largely undetermined. Hearsay is that it was kidney related, but no one can quite remember what they were told through the generations over 100 years — my gut feeling is that she too died from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

What both sudden unexplained heartrelated deaths and heart attacks do have in common is often heredity. If you have any sudden heart-related deaths in your family no matter how healthy you are, I think Jane would want people to aware of how she died and to get checked out. An echocardiogram for example would have highlighted Jane’s condition, but for the vast majority of people, this type of condition is only diagnosed post-mortem.

The second thing I think Jane would want people to know is that tragedies can happen to you and anyone you love on any ordinary day. Live life to the fullest; say I love you, I miss you and I’m sorry often, and have some form of preparation in place in the event you don’t get a chance to say goodbye (a will, a letter to a loved one, a conversation).

Of all the people I have the pleasure of knowing in all the world, Jane was the last person I’d have ever thought would die young. Sadly, I won’t grow to be a little old lady with her, but I will keep living positively and grow as old and happy as I can, for her. I try to honour Jane’s life by taking on new challenges and one of those is walking 30 kilometres in Coastrek on the 24th of March to raise money for the Heart Foundation. We’ve already smashed our fundraising goal of $2,500, but please search “Jane Assie” on the Coastrek website to locate the Jane Assie Memorial Walkers team if you’d like to donate too.

I’ve learned a lot since Jane passed and consistently reflect on her joy of life and amazing sense of positivity. Jane’s legacy of happiness and positivity drives me to instil that type of life outlook in my four children, because if there is one thing for sure it is that even though Jane had a shorter life than she should have, she sure did have a happy one, and most of that joy was simply from the way she looked at life.

If you have a family history of heartrelated illness or death, please see your GP.

More than 250 mountain bike riders of all ages descended on the Glenwood Forest Trails at Lidster on March 11–12 for Round One of the NSW Gravity Enduro series. It was a full weekend of racing in superb weather for the local and visiting mountain bike enthusiasts.