‘Healthy’ father of one, 35, dies just 36 hours after dismissing stomach pain as food poisoning – could you be at risk?

A London woman has been left traumatised after watching her ‘healthy’ husband’s rapid death from what they believed was a bout of food poisoning.

In fact Andrejs Glazyrina, 35, died of sudden pancreatitis — when the pancreas, part of the digestive system, becomes severely inflamed.

While the condition is usually caused by heavy alcohol consumption and/or gallstones (hardened deposits of bile in the gallbladder), it can also develop randomly.

Rarely is the problem fatal. 

For Mr Glazyrina, the deadly condition struck in January this year while on holiday in Bulgaria with his wife Katerina and five year-old daughter, Lizzie.

The day before the family were due to return to London, Mr Glazyrina began complaining of ‘a bit of tummy pain’.

They both assumed it must be a knock-on effect of a bout of food poisoning he’d suffered a few days prior. 

However, within a few hours, the pain had spread to his back and his stomach became tender to touch.

 His wife visited the local pharmacy but the drugs they sold her didn’t help.

‘He began to look pale, so we cancelled the flight and called an ambulance,’ said Ms Glazyrina.

‘They found his blood pressure was low.’

Mr Glazyrina was taken to Burgas Hospital, where doctors performed tests and explained he was suffering from pancreatitis. 

Ms Glazyrina left her husband at the hospital that morning, with him assuring her: ‘Don’t worry I’ll be home soon.’

When she returned later that day, she discovered he had been taken to the intensive care unit with multiple organ dysfunction, likely to be caused by acute pancreatitis.

The following morning Ms Glazyrina received the devastating call that her husband had died during the night.

‘It was the hardest day of my life. I don’t know how I managed to get through it,’ she said.

‘It’s like you went on holiday and you can never come back to the life you’ve been building together.’

With her daughter to look after and all the paperwork required to repatriate his body, she said she ‘didn’t have the option to fall apart’.

‘You have to find ways to be strong,’ she said.

‘(Grief) changes you every day… you lose him every day — when you look at your child and want to adore her, you lose him.

‘Anything you do that reminds you makes you lose him again.’

After his death, the family’s local community in Hackney came together to raise money for Ms Glazyrina and her daughter, raising more than £12,500 through an online fundraiser on GoFundMe.

‘The community response has been amazing,’ she said.

‘I never expected it in a million years. I’m just grateful, that’s all I can say.’

Despite the tragedy and hardship which has followed, Ms Glazyrina is hopeful she can harness her experiences to help others going through the same thing.

She has started to share her reflections on recovering from loss on her Instagram page coaching_with_kat.

‘It’s hard to find the balance between grieving and the extreme responsibility of things to do,’ she said.

‘I want to be able to empower others as a transformational life coach, and help people going through big life changes.’

She also hopes to raise awareness of the symptoms of pancreatitis, which include sudden severe pain in the centre of the abdomen which gets steadily worse and can then travel along your back, according to the NHS.

She also hopes to encourage parents to take out life insurance, adding: ‘You never know what events can happen.

‘You don’t want to add financial pressure on top of the grief and many other complexities that surround loss.’