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, October 27, 2017
Jeff Flake and Bob Corker: Republicans Opposing Trump from Within
Miracle Girl: Jeff Flake and Bob Corker: Republicans Opposing Trump from Within
Liberals unwilling to welcome Flake and Corker into the opposition need a slap upside the head. Now is the time for the left to cast aside petty tribalism and embrace everyone willing to join the cause of opposing Trump.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Sharing Reality: How Do You Create a Post-Post-Truth World?
Miracle Girl: Sharing Reality: How Do You Create a Post-Post-Truth World?
False facts spread like measles through the unvaccinated. Can sharing reality change that?
Is there a way to create a world where everyone accepts the scientific way of knowing?
Friday, October 20, 2017
ACA Marketplaces: Eve of Destruction or Dawn of Bipartisanship?
Miracle Girl: ACA Marketplaces: Eve of Destruction or Dawn of Bipartisanship?
Will senatorial bipartisanship fund cost-sharing reductions? Or will Trump's cancellation of the payments be allowed to destroy ACA marketplaces?
In other words, are all Republicans as eager to destroy Obamacare marketplaces as President Trump?
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Thurgood Marshall: Mr. Civil Rights in an Era of Racial Regression
Miracle Girl: Thurgood Marshall: Mr. Civil Rights in an Era of Racial Regression
Thurgood Marshall was a one-man Black Lives Matter movement at a time when the NAACP hung banners proclaiming, "A Man Was Lynched Yesterday."
The blunt Supreme Court justice would've had some choice words for Donald Trump.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Killing CSRs: Which Supervillain Does Donald Trump Resemble Most?
Miracle Girl: Killing CSRs: Which Supervillain Does Donald Trump Resemble Most?
President Trump is killing Obamacare cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) for lower income people. Is his resemblance to a supervillain a coincidence?
In real life, there are no superheroes to save us from the villainy of Donald Trump.
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Association Health Plans: Obamacare Death by a Thousand Cuts
Miracle Girl: Association Health Plans: Obamacare Death by a Thousand Cuts
Is Trump's authorization of association health plans designed to cause the death spiral Obamacare has avoided on its own?
If at first you don't succeed, lie, lie again.
Friday, October 6, 2017
Empathy: Missing from the Vegas Shooter and Cauterized by Tribalism
Miracle Girl: Empathy: Missing from the Vegas Shooter and Cauterized by Tribalism
Is there an off switch for empathy?
Empathy is the essence of humanity...and the quality the Las Vegas shooter lacked. Do we really want tribalism to destroy our empathy too?
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Mass Shootings: Death from Above, the Evil Lives Inside
Miracle Girl: Mass Shootings: Death from Above, the Evil Lives Inside
Most people mourn lives lost instead of taking them. At times like these, we hug our loved ones a little too tightly as we imagine losing them to the random whims of a compassionless killer.
No demons need apply when explaining mass shootings like the Las Vegas massacre. The evil in the human "soul" comes from within.
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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.