how did he die? he did way too many experiments on himself?
Polycystic Kidney Disease - (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycystic_kidney_disease ) A lot of his family had it, and he had it too. He was at the point where he was going to need dialysis, moving toward transplant, and he put it off. Toward the end, I think he probably just accepted it, and was just going to let nature take its course. He was less interested in bodybuilding type stuff, and spent a lot of the last few months on other things like travel, and bicycling -
http://www.recumbents.com/mars/pages/proj/doug/pharo/projdougbike.html .
Also he had a run of bad luck romantically, both spontaneous, and of his own making. One girlfriend had a motorcycle accident that almost killed her. And right before he died he had another competitor/girlfriend that had gotten bad calf implants down in Mexico (where Duchaine was going for all types of medical work). She lost her leg after it.
He always wanted a real family, and after all that, it seemed it wasn't in the cards. He died just a bit after.
Like many folks he had a good and bad side. I remember him being very decent to regular folks, and young bodybuilders. But if you embraced the hard core, he could dangerously push it. Also, heck of a troll when he wanted. Had Titus, Diana Dennis, etc.... melting down on Misc.fitness.Weights. His move sometimes was to drop a bit of gossip into a post, then go "aw, shit, I shouldn't of said that" after it had been quoted, reposted, etc.....
