My "miraculous" recovery from a 6-week coma through a skeptical and humanist lens, written by a writer published by Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry. When I awoke, I could barely raise my head, and it has been a hard road back. I also aim to educate the public about covert cognition. Too many people who are still conscious are being dismissed as hopeless vegetables, as I was. As many as one in five people with consciousness disorders have covert cognition. For them, there is still hope.
Friday, April 28, 2017
Trumpcare or Shtupped Care: Replacing Obamacare with No Care at All
Miracle Girl: Trumpcare or Shtupped Care: Replacing Obamacare with No Care at All
GOP "moderates" are afraid of an electoral shtupping. The poor, sick, and aging fear losing something far worse than an election. As Trumpcare fails yet again, the political cowardice of moderate conservatives may save countless lives.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Zombie Trumpcare Rises Again…or is it Terminatorcare?
Miracle Girl: Zombie Trumpcare Rises Again…or is it Terminatorcare?
Like the Terminator, Zombie Trumpcare won't stay dead...again. But for the poor and sick, Trumpcare could be an all-too-real Terminator.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Pet Death: A Rainbow Bridge to Nowhere
Miracle Girl: Pet Death: A Rainbow Bridge to Nowhere
As much as we would like to look away from the reality of death, it will always haunt our loving relationships. I accept the reality of death, but that doesn't mean I want to see it in the animals I love.
Labels:
cats,
death,
grieving,
Klaatu,
Miracle Girl,
Nala,
pets,
Rainbow Bridge
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Christianity and Jesus Christ Superstar: Dispelling the Godspell
Miracle Girl: Christianity and Jesus Christ Superstar: Dispelling the Godspell
Can you still enjoy Jesus Christ Superstar after you've broken the Godspell? For Keith, the answer is yes. Though I was never under the Godspell, I can enjoy the movie too.
But we both have an enduring love Jesus Christ Superstar, despite the fact that he isn't that to either of us.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Theists: He opened up the rock and…something flowed out
Miracle Girl: Theists: He opened up the rock and…something flowed out
When theists invade the Patheos Nonreligious sandbox it becomes a litterbox of nonsense. It's particularly confusing for me, as someone raised without religion.
For someone who writes about religion for a major atheist website, I don't really understand theists.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Holy Moses or Passover Plotz?
Miracle Girl: Holy Moses or Passover Plotz?
Passover passes over the truth. My fellow "members of the tribe" supposes Moses erroneously. In truth, Passover commemorates a mythological exodus of a people who weren't enslaved, led by a man who never existed.
Friday, April 7, 2017
Risk Pools: Night of the Living Zombie Trumpcare
Miracle Girl: Risk Pools: Night of the Living Zombie Trumpcare
They Won’t Stay Dead! should be the motto for Trumpcare. This time, the GOP is trying to use the failed elixir of risk pools to raise the walking dead Obamacare repeal.
This time around, the GOP wants to waterboard the sick in zombie Trumpcare risk pools.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Appetite for Violence: Good and Evil Live Within Us All
Miracle Girl: Appetite for Violence: Good and Evil Live Within Us All
Good and evil have always existed within humanity. No metaphorical fruit required.
Humanism is a worldview of violence and destruction according to some Christians. Not "fallen" for it.
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Coma Girl
About Me
Not a miracle recovery, but a miracle of modern medicine
In 2013 I fell into a six-week coma and nearly died after I contracted legionella. The Legionnaire's disease was in turn triggered by immunosuppression caused by the prednisone I was taking for my rare autoimmune disease, dermatomyositis.
I suffered a series of strokes on both sides of my brain when the sepsis caused my blood pressure to plummet. I fell into a deep coma. My kidneys and lungs began to fail, as my body was began dying one organ at a time. My doctors told my loved ones to give up hope for my full recovery. They expected me to die, and even if I somehow lived, I would remain a vegetable or at best left so hopelessly brain-damaged that I would never be same. But unbeknownst to them, while they were shining lights in my eyes and shaking their heads, I was telling them in my coma-dream--my secular version of a near-death experience--to leave me alone because I was trying to get back to sleep. I was experiencing what is known as covert cognition, the subject of my Skeptical Inquirer article "Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience," which appeared in their July/August issue.
But it wasn't a miracle--despite what so many continue to believe--that I recovered so fully. I owe my life not to God, but the miracles of modern medicine, as well as the nature of the watershed-area brain damage I suffered, as I detailed in my article and in this blog.