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Thursday, August 31, 2017

Pulling the Plug: Given a Death Sentence for Being Unable to Respond


Miracle GirlPulling the Plug: Given a Death Sentence for Being Unable to Respond

One in five apparently vegetative patients are actually covertly aware. Should they receive the death penalty for their body's incapacity? 
The more we learn about cognition in the vegetative, the more we realize how little we know. We should keep that in mind when considering pulling the plug.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Vegetative Mock Trial: An All-Too-Real Life and Death Scenario


Miracle GirlVegetative Mock Trial: An All-Too-Real Life and Death Scenario

Should a vegetative wife have her feeding tube removed? That was the question posed by a student mock trial. Yet the issues at stake are far from moot.
Would I have rather have been taken off life support and allowed to die? That's what the student asked me.
Seriously!???

Friday, August 25, 2017

Celebrating Coma Day: 5 Explorations of Covert Awareness


Miracle Girl: Celebrating Coma Day: 5 Explorations of Covert Awareness

Celebrating Coma Day -- the anniversary of my awakening -- by exploring my journey and the researchers who allow the covertly aware to speak for themselves. What better way to mark my rebirthday than by cheering the heroes of covert awareness?

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Racial Tolerance: Charlottesville was NOT a Total Eclipse of the Heart


Miracle GirlRacial Tolerance: Charlottesville was NOT a Total Eclipse of the Heart

Like the Great American Eclipse, the light of racial tolerance has proven to be far stronger than the retreating darkness of hate. Indeed, the casual ease between every shade and ethnicity is so commonplace that we don't even notice it. 
Take that, Richard Spencer. 


Friday, August 18, 2017

It’s a Hard Luck Life: My Pre-Coma Mindset


Miracle GirlIt’s a Hard Luck Life: My Pre-Coma Mindset


I didn't realize how lucky and resilient I was until I suffered the worst luck imaginable...and not only survived, but thrived.
Coping with life's hardships is a survival instinct, too.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Tennis Study: Revealing Active Minds Adrift in Inactivated Bodies


Miracle GirlTennis Study: Revealing Active Minds Adrift in Inactivated Bodies

A seemingly vegetative patient participated in his own care using the tennis study technique. But thousand of covertly aware patients languish...for now. 

Scott Routley's heroic efforts reach out from the gray zone of consciousness will help countless others. 

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Changing Lady Liberty’s Beacon to Immigrants Into a Stiff-Arm


Miracle GirlChanging Lady Liberty’s Beacon to Immigrants Into a Stiff-Arm
Like the travel ban, the Trump administration's revised admittance policies for immigrants is a cover for the total ban they wish they could impose.
If only the Trump administration didn't have to adhere to that pesky constitution.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Friday, August 4, 2017

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Obamacare Cost-Sharing Reduction Payments: Their Money or Your Life


Miracle Girl: Obamacare Cost-Sharing Reduction Payments: Their Money or Your Life

With Trump continuing to hold Obamacare cost-sharing reduction payments hostage, will the ransom be paid by bipartisan congressional negotiations?
The foxes now own the henhouse. If Obamacare implodes it will be at the hands of President Trump.

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Coma Girl

Coma Girl

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.