Jacko’s secret diseases – ‘bleeding internally and too sick for lung transplant’

Fans were devastated when Michael Jackson was found dead at his home in California having suffered a prescription drug induced cardiac arrest on June 25, 2009.

Aged just 50 and about to embark on his comeback This Is It show at The O2 Arena in London, for many his death appeared to have come out of the blue.

Conrad Murray, the physician who prescribed the anesthetic Propofol that killed him, was eventually sentenced to four years in jail for the star's involuntary manslaughter.

However, Jackson's addiction to medication is said to have been the tip on the iceberg in terms of his hidden health woes.

But with reported debts of £300million, Jackson was said to have been completely focused on pulling off the tour and keeping his failing health a secret when in truth, he was a gravely sick man.

According to his autopsy, he was crippled by arthritis and his lungs were so scarred and inflammed that they were struggling to function.

His biographer Ian Halperin, claimed Jackson suffered from an inherited disease that restricted protein in the lungs and left him gasping for breath and too weak to walk.

And in 2008 - a year before Jackson's death - Halperin told The Sun that the situation had become critical.

“He needs a lung transplant, but may be too weak to go through with it," he said of the star, who by that point was using a wheelchair.

"He also has emphysema and chronic gastrointestinal bleeding, which his doctors have had a lot of trouble stopping.

“It’s the bleeding that’s the most problematic part. It could kill him.”

On top of that, he claimed Jackson's vision in left eye was '95 percent gone', and the coroner's report later corroborated how sick the Jackson 5 singer really was.

Crippled by degenerative bone disease in his spine and fingers, he also took 'hours to wee' due to an enlarged prostate and was plagued by complications from years of cosmetic surgery.

The father-of-three also suffered from two rare skin conditions - vitiligo and discoid lupus - and had allegedly been 'doctor hopping' in a bid to satiate his addiction to prescription drugs.

And after analysing his autopsy report, forensic expert Dr Richard Shepherd found it was a 'miracle' that Jackson hadn't died years earlier given the decrepit state of his drug-ravaged body.

“Michael Jackson was a man with numerous physical and psychological problems, and to overcome these he had spiralled into drug dependency and addiction,” Shepherd told TV show, Autopsy: The Last Hours of Michael Jackson.

“He was using dangerous drugs in an untested manner. In some ways, it is a miracle that he lasted as long as he did.

“There was a lot of fantasy surrounding why Michael died. If we look at the post mortem which is a solid, factual, independent comment, we can interpret that. We can understand why he died - a whole series of events in his life and in his immediate pre-death period.”

Meanwhile, Jackson's body guard has always been convinced that his boss knew his death was imminent, claiming the star tried to gather his loved ones just days before he passed.

Matt Fiddes, who worked with the star for more than a decade, said the singer was asking friends he hadn't seen in years, including British actor Mark Lester, to fly in from around the world to visit him.

Fiddes claims Jackson even asked his dad Joe, with whom he had a famously stormy relationship, to go see him - suggesting he had predicted his own demise.

"He begged myself and Mark Lester to come and see him two days before [he] passed away in LA," Fiddes wrote on Instagram.

"And he wanted his Dad (Joesph) too to be with him. (sic)

"We sensed something was wrong but thought he just wanted to get out the 50 shows planned for London a few weeks later.

"Myself and Mark had young family’s and commitments and had we known what was going on in LA. We would of be on the next flight."

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