As the ESPN family continues to mourn Ed Aschoff, who died on his 34th birthday on Christmas Eve, the reporter's fiancee took to Twitter with a touching, image-filled tribute. Tweeting from Aschoff's account, Katy Berteau thanked everyone for their support, noting "it has brought me brief moments of joy in this darkness to see all the pictures, videos, and memories of all the lives he touched." Berteau also used the tweet thread to clarify what had happened to the man ESPN says she was set to marry in April in New Orleans, per CNN Business. She says a week after she and Aschoff had first gone to the ER, where he was diagnosed with multifocal pneumonia, they were back, with Aschoff experiencing worsening symptoms despite the antibiotics he was taking.
More extensive tests were conducted, and Berteau explains that the next round of treatment wasn't for pneumonia, but for a rare condition doctors believed Aschoff was suffering from called hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, or HLH, which can be brought on in adults by an infection and cause one's immune system to not work properly. Despite the medical staff's efforts, Aschoff died three days after he was placed in the ICU. Still, Berteau reveals he was upbeat until the very end. "He kept the doctors and nurses constantly laughing, and always made a point to thank them and tell them what a great job they were doing," she posts, adding that he even made sure to arrange from his hospital bed for Berteau's Christmas presents to be wrapped. "He loved people with his entire being," she notes. Heavy.com has more on Aschoff's life, including how he talked openly of growing up biracial in Mississippi. (More ESPN stories.)
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