Medscape editor and author Dr. Bret Stretka, MD, died suddenly after a seizure last week according to his wife. Stretka was 43 years old.
Stretka’s bio at Medscape (excerpt):
Bret S. Stetka, MD
Site Editorial Director: Medscape Neurology, Medscape Psychiatry and Mental Health, Medscape Rheumatology
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Bret S. Stetka is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, and received his BS in biology from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He has worked as a writer and editor at Medscape since 2007.
Stetka also contributed to Scientific American and NPR. He was the author of the 2021 book, A History of the Human Brain.
Stretka’s last post on Twitter was July 21 and featured a photo of his young daughter reacting to getting a COVID vaccine shot.
A little disgruntled, but took it like a champ pic.twitter.com/2tw7SjRart
— Bret Stetka (@BretStetka) July 22, 2022
Stretka’s wife, New Yorker writer Amanda Petrusich announced his passing on Twitter and GoFundMe Thursday with an appeal for donations for a college fund for their daughter, “Last week, my husband @BretStetka died suddenly after a seizure at home. He was 43; we’d been married 17 years. Our daughter just turned 1. My family set up a college fund for anyone who might wish to make a donation in Bret’s memory. Love to you all.”
Last week, my husband @BretStetka died suddenly after a seizure at home. He was 43; we’d been married 17 years. Our daughter just turned 1. My family set up a college fund for anyone who might wish to make a donation in Bret’s memory. Love to you all. https://t.co/aTHs9Xr6yX
— Amanda Petrusich (@amandapetrusich) August 11, 2022
Excerpt from the GoFundMe appeal (bold added):
Late last week, Bret Stetka, my husband and partner of seventeen years, died suddenly after having a seizure at home. He was forty-three years old. Our daughter, Nico, just turned one.
Over the last few (impossible, surreal) days, many of you have asked — so kindly — if there’s somewhere you can make a donation in Bret’s memory. We don’t yet know exactly what killed him, so I’ve been grasping to name a foundation in the strange and terrifying fog of his passing. What I do know is that Bret was brilliant, a true intellectual, a neuroscientist, someone who thought and wrote so deeply and intensely about humankind. From the moment Nico arrived, he was gearing up to teach his daughter everything he knew, and he knew everything: how to play drums and guitar and piano, how to make jokes, how our brains and bodies work, what stars are, how to tie her little shoes, how to roast a chicken, how to plant a garden, how to love freely and purely and without expectation. He couldn’t wait for her to start learning about all the wild and beautiful miracles of the world. I’ve set up a 529 fund for Nico’s education, which she will be able to access later on for whatever kind of school she chooses; my family and I are asking that in lieu of flowers etc. any donations be directed to her there, via GoFundMe…
