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Man's illness fear 'prompted suicide'
By Andrew Bellard


A 32-year-old man who was terrified of ending up in a wheelchair because of a diagnosed illness was found hanging at his girlfriend's home.

An inquest heard that Matthew Grogan had been diagnosed with Arterial Venous Malformation (AVM) which affects the blood supply to the brain.

His mum Jean Scholes, said Mr Grogan was worried he would suffer a stroke and end up "a cabbage."
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"His worst nightmare was that he would end up in a wheelchair," said Mrs Scholes.

His partner, Stephanie Furnell, of Park Road, Great Harwood, said they had talked about getting married but she felt he was frightened of commitment.

She said he hadn't seemed "right" for several days before his death.

He kept meditating, was giving things away and kept "forgiving everybody for everything."

"It just didn't seem like him," said Mrs Furnell. "He didn't sound like the man I had fallen in love with."

She said that on November 20 they had a minor row and she ended up sleeping on the settee.

The following morning she went to the bedroom and found him hanging from the four poster bed.

Mr Grogan, whose home address was in Leeds could have had an operation to treat his condition but his mum said he was set against it.

"He said he wouldn't have the operation, he would rather be dead," said Mrs Scholes. "He said they weren't practising on him."

The medical cause of death was given as hanging and coroner Michael Singleton recorded a verdict that Mr Grogan killed himself.

AVM is a congenital disorder of the connections between veins and arteries in the vascular system. Normally, oxygenated blood is pumped by the heart through arteries to the brain, where it enters a fine network of tiny vessels called capillaries. Arterial-Venous Malformations are areas that lack the tiny capillaries.