As followers of this blog know, I do not make it a habit to link to my columns in the print or web media. But I will make an exception in this case. Last week, I wrote in this space about the tragic death of Jett Travolta.

As a Fox News contributor, I reported on this death as well as Patrick Swayze’s cancer and pneumonia, just as I have reported on the illnesses of many other celebrities. I have been struck by how often the media distort these health reports, while spokespeople for the celebrity too often use exaggerations or fictions as a smokescreen to protect their client from media scrutiny. This might seem fair, except when you consider how many millions of us role-model our celebs, and even obsess on their health. When we are misinformed about our heroes’ health, we end up mislearning medicine, and an opportunity to inform the public about important health issues that may pertain to them directly is lost.

I am proud of the way I — and my fellow medical journalists at Fox — from our wonderful health editor Dr. Manny to the Ashtons to Keith Ablow to Isadore Rosenfeld, read through the tea leaves as best we can and come up with our best interpretations. We are not these celebrities’ doctors, which necessarily limits our take, and we don’t always have all the facts, but we do the best we can.

Anyway, here is my take in this week’s NY Post, click here.

Dr. Marc Siegel is an internist and associate professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine. He is a FOX News medical contributor and writes a health column for LA Times, where he examines TV and movies for medical accuracy. Dr. Siegel is the author of “False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear“ and “Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic.”  Read more at www.doctorsiegel.com

John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston are both successful actors.  They have the rare ability to slip the bindings of their own life stories and enter dramas not their own, scripted to prompt reflection or bring laughter or tears.  But none of their training in how to harness their emotions in service to a role could have been any help to them on Friday when they confronted the harshest of realities:  Their 16-year-old son Jett died after suffering a seizure and apparently hitting his head on the bathtub.

I have seen the loss of a child strip the most talented and richest and most politically astute parents of all composure, just as I have seen it undo loving mothers and fathers working for hourly wages.  It is the kind of tragedy that should remind us we are all more vulnerable to our worlds collapsing than we believe, that we are all more united in our hopes and our fears than we allow ourselves to acknowledge. 

Whether you are white or black, American or Israeli, Palestinian or Jewish, Catholic or a Scientologist, you know once you are a parent, what the worst news would be.  It wouldn’t have a thing to do with your own health or well-being, let alone your fame or your fortune.  It would be that call from a hospital emergency room or that visit from a police officer or  a doctor fresh from the operating room telling you that your child, the one you love so much, won’t outlive you. 

Scientologists hold psychiatry in contempt – they often see psychiatrists like me as manipulating people’s minds.  They object especially to the use of medications in conditions like depression, panic disorder and schizophrenia.  But on this, the religion and the profession must agree:  Being able to give voice to your grief in the wake of losing a child is essential.  So, too, is sharing it with other parents who have lost children.  Because there are limits even to empathy, and neither a noble religious leader, nor a sensitive psychiatrist can fully feel (without having lived through it) what the loss of a child is like. 

I tell my patients that they will heal, but that they should never expect to be the same.  As J.D. Salinger once wrote, “the membranes between us are so thin;” we can’t lose a human being whose soul is part of our own, and emerge whole.  I tell them that the best way to honor their child is to celebrate the life that son or daughter lived and to live life as fully as they possibly can.  I tell them our work may begin and end in months, only to begin anew with the first anniversary of their child’s death, or the 10th, or another child’s wedding that reminds them of the empty seat at the head table.  I tell them not to hold back tears.

I also tell them that love is more powerful than anything in the world, and that if they can say that their son or daughter knew that he or she was loved by them, that they gave that child the greatest gift on earth, enough to last to heaven, if that is the family’s belief or into the next lifetime (as would be the Travoltas’ belief).

I don’t know John Travolta or Kelly Preston, but having sat with more than my share of grieving parents for more hours than most human beings, I know something of their pain.  And I know that, transformed by the human spirit or by God, it will connect them ever more firmly to their truth and to all humanity.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com or e-mail him at info@keithablow.com.

There has been a lot of confusion about what may have happened to kill Jett Travolta, the only son of John Travolta, so suddenly at only 16 years old. This confusion is not surprising. It happens every time that we the public mix with what is essentially a private matter. Prurient public curiosity aside, somewhere in here may be a message about the need for compliance with seizure medication, a particular problem among adolescents, where medications are about 66 percent effective. There have been some reports that Jett’s medication may have been stopped because it wasn’t working. It is not yet clear whether the parents’ belief in scientology kept them from seeking other treatments, or whether that would have made a difference in controlling Jett’s seizures.

For what it’s worth, here is my take on Jett Travolta’s tragic death:

1. It is unlikely that Kawasaki’s disease (an inflammatory disease of blood vessels that also causes fever, lymph node swelling, and rashes) played a direct role in Jett Travolta’s tragic death. Though this rare disease (4,000 cases per year) can affect the heart, and also cause seizures, it is also generally cured or in remission by age 5.
2. It has never been confirmed that Jett Travolta suffers from autism, an illness which is characterized by difficulty relating to others. Autism does not cause seizures, though the incidence of seizures is 4-32 percent in autism and only 0.5 percent in the general population.
3. Patients with epilepsy have a mortality rate 2-3 times that of the general population. Epilepsy-related causes of death in this population account for 40 percent of the deaths.
4. Death from epilepsy frequently involves problems with breathing due to obstruction of the airways, buildup of fluid in the lungs (pulmonary edema), or a cardiac arrhythmia resulting from a surge of hormones that accompanies a seizure. (the autopsy would not show an arrhythmia but would show damage to the heart or a problem with the lungs)
5. Sudden, unexplained death in epilepsy accounts for 8-17 percent of these deaths.
6. But in Jett Travolta’s case, news reports would suggest that the most likely causes of death would be trauma-related (hitting his head on the bathtub during the seizure, or drowning). If a blow to the head caused bleeding in the brain, the autopsy will show that.

Dr. Marc Siegel is an internist and associate professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine. He is a FOX News medical contributor and writes a health column for LA Times, where he examines TV and movies for medical accuracy. Dr. Siegel is the author of “False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear“ and “Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic.”  Read more at www.doctorsiegel.com