Miracle, My Ass!

Miracle Girl: Miracle, My Ass!

I have laid out all the reasons why my recovery wasn't a miracle in Coma Chameleon. Yet all the logical and scientific arguments fall on deaf ears with theists. They continue to believe God saved this long-time atheist's life. It's not about logic or evidence; that's why they call it faith.

But I say...miracle, my ass!

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At Sea in the Gulf of Understanding

Here there be creationists.

The Secular Spectrum: At Sea in the Gulf of Understanding

If I knew that my now-former friend didn't understand that she had subscribed to my secularist posts when I brainlessly asked her--along with my other Facebook friends--to like my Facebook page, I might have suggested to her that she unlike my page. I tried to suggest that later, but by that time she had already blocked me.

She thought I was sharing anti-creationist posts to taunt her.

Indeed, if I had thought about it, I never would've asked her to like the page in the first place. I knew that my Facebook page would be aimed at my skeptical and atheistic readers. And she was far from that.

"Penny" was on the extreme edge of Young Earth creationists.

Our differences had kept us from friending each other until then. And sadly, our friendship couldn't survive our friending.

Another view from the other side of the bed

This was taken as I was being transported to All Saints Healthcare, five days before my awakening.

I've read some truly heartbreaking comments from people who have faced the wrenching situation of having loved ones in comas. They came when my Skeptical Inquirer article, "Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience" was posted online and after SI shared a link to my VICE Post Mortem column interview on Facebook. One woman was forced to pull her father's plug because he had a DNR, and another hoped that his son, who had been in a coma since he was 14, wasn't aware of his situation. And those are just two that were moved to comment on Facebook. How many read my article or the interview and mourned anew, but never commented about it?

In my post about this, The view from the other side of the bed, I expressed regret that I had caused them emotional distress when I wrote about the potentially one in five patients with disorders of consciousness who are covertly aware. I vowed to be more sensitive in the future to the family members who have faced this impossibly painful position.

Though my consciousness, so to speak, had been raised, the truth of the matter is that I still feel my greater obligation is to the covertly aware patients who can't speak for themselves. This issue is becoming more pressing by the day as methods of bedside covert cognition detection inch closer to reality.

One story I recently learned of, however, left me feeling heartened that not every loved one of comatose patients was pained by reading my account. Indeed, some may have felt consoled, like the sister of a Facebook friend who had been forwarded my post for the Secular Spectrum, "Please Put a Blanket on Me"--I Was Aware in My Coma. She was confronted with the same heartrending situation with her mother as the other daughter, in which she was also forced to disconnect her parent from a ventilator due to a DNR. But instead of wrestling again with her painful decision, she felt comforted by the information I gave about covert cognition and specifically my own experience.

While I was in the coma, Keith set up a pillow speaker so he could play my favorite music for me. He wanted to keep my mind engaged even when no one was there to do it for me. The music, like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and documentaries, seeped into my coma-dreams. I had wondered why I was able to "daydream" the music in such perfect detail.

As it turned out, my friend's sister had played soothing music for their mother as she lay in her coma. Knowing that it was possible that her mother could hear it gave her considerable solace. It's heartening to know that in relaying my story, I'm not hurting every loved one who has been placed in a situation that no one ever wants to face.

The fact is that there is no way to know if her mother was among the one in five covertly aware patients. The odds are against it, but does it really matter? Few sign a DNR unless there's a good reason for it. But if her mother did indeed have an island of awareness left, she went out surrounded by loved ones, listening to peaceful music as she drifted off for the last time.

Could any of us hope for anything more?

Confessions of a stupid bitch

A while ago, a friend shared an opinion piece on Facebook positing the right to comment on what you think was the gist of an article, even you didn't have time to read it, tl;dr;ca (too long; didn't read; commented anyway). It was tongue-in-cheek, but was seriously arguing that this was okay because you are creating your own interpretation of what the piece said, or didn't say, as the case may be. I suppose it was a postmodernist kind of argument. I am not a postmodernist, and I didn't like that post, in either the usual sense or in the Facebook one. I don't think my friend was actually advocating that position...I hope.

To me, there's no excuse for incivility, but even less so if you haven't bothered to read what you're attacking. Perhaps there should be a Godwin's law-like rule for the inverse relationship between the amount a poster has read of what they're commenting on and the quantity of invective they spew. Let's call it Savage's law for now.

In this scheme, the woman who labeled as bogus Claire Wineland's story of her own version of a coma-dream had read only a portion of the article or watched parts of Claire's video before her blinkered mind said, "No way!" If she was especially closed minded, it's possible that she read the entire article, watched the video, and still couldn't accept the idea of Claire's mind translating the ice treatments for her fever into an Alaskan landscape. I had ice treatments too. The only reason I didn't mention the ice packs as another potential source of my ice cream-related coma-dreams in my Skeptical Inquirer article was I didn't know about it then.

The woman who said of my coma-dream, "Didn't experience anything so stupid as this bitch's overactive imagination," clearly got no further than the phrase "near-death experience." She thought I was claiming to have seen Heaven, but had no idea that I had actually said that I didn't see angels or dead relatives precisely because I'm an atheist. Yet she felt perfectly entitled to call my story stupid and label me a bitch.

It's hard to say how much the guy who said of my story, "Does anyone really believe this shit?" had read. Did he even get past the title or only a single word? He refused to name what part of my story he disbelieved. Was "this shit" the story as told in the VICE interview or my article? Or both? Was it stupid and did he also think I'm a bitch? And if it was shit, it was almost certainly bogus, as well. Perhaps it was all of the above.

Yes, these are the same examples I used in my last post. And you may be thinking that these are relatively mild considering the bile often dished out online. But I'm new to being a semi-public figure, and I imagine this is barely a taste of what's to come. I can't help wondering, if this is a form of postmodern online argument, will post-post-post modern online debate bring rational discourse or will it make us envy Socrates his cup of hemlock?

Coping with the not-so-covertly unaware

I was uncommonly annoyed by a one word comment made in an ABC news article thread about Claire Wineland's video, What It's Like To Be In A Coma.That word? Bogus. What about Claire's account was bogus to that woman? Did she think that adorable, bouncy, 18-year-old with cystic fibrosis was lying about her account of integrating things going on around her during her coma into her own version of a coma-dream? Was covert cognition too far outside of her limited mindset? Of course, it was my own experience that made me feel so outraged. I didn't respond to that woman, but I quickly clicked the down arrow to disapprove her comment.

So, I wasn't surprised that my own story would draw similar comments. As a skeptic, knowing that memory is not like a recording but a mixtape or heavily edited document, you always have to keep in mind that your memory is far from infallible. But what do you do when a fellow skeptic challenges your experience using the same logic? Yes, science cannot credit one person's experience because it's anecdotal. But we all have to proceed through our lives as if our memories are at least somewhat reliable. Otherwise, we would be paralyzed with inaction. A true skeptic, however, will acknowledge when their memory is proven wrong, instead of doubling-down like so many people do.

So far, I haven't received much of this kind of logical challenge to my story, however. Some objections I've gotten to my account of my coma experience in my VICE interview and my Skeptical Inquirer article "Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience" were clearly not from skeptics, even though that's how they self-identify. Perhaps they rejected my coma experience because it was too much outside their understanding, like the woman in the news article comment thread. Indeed, one woman who had had no memory of the three days she spent in a coma when she was 12 opined, "Didn't experience anything so stupid as this bitch's overactive imagination."

Okay, I admit it. I do have an overactive imagination. When did that become a bad thing? I am a fiction writer, after all. I'll let you decide if I'm a bitch. I opted not to respond to her, but since this was in a thread posted by Skeptical Inquirer's Facebook page, which was sharing my VICE interview, a bunch of skeptics came to the rescue. They correctly surmised that she hadn't read the article. In fact, as it turned out, she thought that I was recounting a visit to Heaven during my NDE. There's no point in bothering to read the article before spewing venom online, right? So, her comment was not about my actual account at all.

However, it's hard to know what was going on in the mind of the person who said, "Does anyone really believe this shit?" A skeptic tried to draw out his explanation in a long thread, starting with, "What, specifically, don't you believe?" But a second poster probably called it when she said, "Another commenter who seemingly didn't read the article."

A third man's objection I've mentioned before. On the surface, he was being a skeptic when he said, "One person's comatose recollection does NOT a true story make." But in another thread he revealed that his son had been in a coma for fourteen years, and he hoped his son wasn't covertly aware.

Most skeptics who have actually read my article seem to be accepting my anecdotal personal recollections. Why? In my article, I presented the science of covert cognition. In didn't say that it's real because of my experience, only that this was how I experienced it. A good skeptic should question anecdotal accounts, but not reject out of hand covert cognition because it's outside their conception of the vegetative mind. The woman commenting on the Claire Wineland article wasn't being a true skeptic because a skeptic would've laid out her objections instead of flatly labeling Claire's story as bogus.

We all (at least those who aren't jerks) have to operate on the assumption that most people are giving the best, most honest recollections their faulty, non-Memorex memories can provide. Even the stupid bitches.

The view from the other side of the bed

When I wrote my Skeptical Inquirer article "Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience," I was hoping that my experience and my research into covert awareness would help inform the public about the one in five people with consciousness disorders who have covert cognition. But it didn't occur to me (but should've) that my article would also affect the family members who have already faced that unimaginably painful position...from the other side of the bed.

After Skeptical Inquirer shared my VICE Post Mortem column interview on Facebook, which linked to my article, one woman thought the article was fascinating, but also found it “very painful and heartbreaking to read.” That's because she was forced into a situation no one would ever want to be in. Her father was in a coma and he had a do not resuscitate order. She sadly, and obviously extremely reluctantly, gave the order to pull the plug.

I gave her my sympathy and told her that if he had a DNR, then she did what he wanted. Few ever sign a DNR, and those that do usually have a good reason for it. But ever since she was forced into this wrenching decision, she's probably had pangs of doubt. And then she reads my article explaining why people like her father might still be "in there."

In answer to someone who posted that it sounds frightening to be trapped in a seemingly endless dream/nightmare, I responded that it wasn't really that scary. But another Facebook member, who is living through every parent’s nightmare, responded, “I try not to think how frightening it would be. My son has been in a coma since he was 14. He's now 31.” And in a second post, he added, “I hope it's just blank.”

I said, “I'm so sorry to hear this. My heart is with you.” But, really, there’s nothing anyone can say to ease his anguish. I certainly hope I did nothing to deepen it. I'm afraid the answer is that I did, and it makes me sad. Replying to another poster, he said, "One person's comatose recollection does NOT a true story make." He has good reasons to wish my story weren't true, and I hope for him that his son is among the four out of five patients without covert awareness.

It’s likely that many more who have faced these unimaginably painful situations read my article in SI and the VICE interview. Do I regret publishing it? No, because I think my greater obligation is to those voiceless patients with covert cognition. How many are having their plugs pulled not because they have a DNR, but because their doctors say they're hopeless? Kate Bainbridge and others who were in similar situations have spoken of the same concerns. As a writer, I'm in a unique position to spread knowledge of covert awareness to the general public. Perhaps in the future, my words will give ammunition to the arguments of the family members of the covertly aware when doctors pooh-pooh their observations, as mine did.

The daughter who faced that horrific choice with her father noted the advances in covert cognition research Dr. Adrian Owen I mentioned in my article. I added that he’s made considerable progress in developing techniques to detect covert awareness in community hospitals. In the future, people like her may no longer be forced to guess about cognition of their loved ones. 

So, would I do anything different? Yes, next time I will add a sympathetic paragraph about the countless families facing that inadequate testing and incomplete knowledge.

My heart goes out to them all.

WaPo on my CoMa (article)

Funny, frequently profane and adamantly atheistic, Savage tosses off such lines as “The reason I didn’t see dead relatives is I don’t believe in life after death. . . . I did, however, dream of ice cream.”

This is what Washington Post writer Nancy Szokan wrote in a Health & Science section article about my Skeptical Inquirer article "Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience" (July/August issue). The WaPo article, which appeared both in their print edition and online, is titled, "How does it feel to be in a coma for six weeks? Like a long bad night's sleep." I can answer that firsthand. In fact, I did.

Of course, this is great publicity for my writing and for Skeptical Inquirer. Indeed, the Center for Inquiry, which publishes Skeptical Inquirer, as well as Free Inquiry, where two of my essays will soon be published, posted a blurb about the WaPo article in their Facebook newsletter The Morning Heresy. But even better, the rest of the paragraph I previously quoted, states:

In a more serious vein, she casts her story as a warning against giving up on coma victims, running breezily through accounts of studies indicating that “covert cognition” occurs in a striking number of people who have been in a persistent vegetative state for years.

So public awareness of the covertly aware--as many as one in five people with consciousness disorders--was boosted by the WaPo article, as well. And I further hope that articles like this will inform their loved ones that they may indeed still be "in there," as Kate Bainbridge put it. Too many doctors pooh-pooh the signs of awareness that loved ones observe, as my doctors did.

And, I received additional good news on the publicity front today. I also learned that the book Dr. Adrian Owen is writing--the one I will be contributing to slightly by answering his questions and sending him my hospital records--is for the popular market, not just a coterie of researchers in the field.

When his book comes out, I hope no neurologist will be able to say that they haven't heard of Dr. Owen's groundbreaking work. And no loved ones of the victims will, either.

Knock, knock, knockin' on Heaven's door...with Santa and the Coca-Cola polar bears

Not Heaven, but our view as we headed over the Alps on the way back from Sicily. The clouds eventually cleared and we got some good pics of the mountain peaks.

Today, a friend shared an online ABC article about Claire Wineland on my Facebook timeline. It gave a few specific details that Claire left out of her video, like the fact that she had sepsis (which is what put me in my non-medically induced coma). A neurologist quoted in the story took pains to point out that her coma was medically induced, as if that explained why Claire was able to perceive things around her and incorporate them into her coma-dream. At least that's how it sounded like to me.

While most of the coma-dream accounts I've read online were indeed from people who were also in medically induced comas, I can attest that it is not the necessary precursor. It may well be more common in that group because their comas aren't as deep, but we can't really know, since so many in my situation die without ever being able to tell the tale.

At any rate, I can't help feeling exercised about this subject, so I felt compelled to comment. I also read the rest of the lively discussion, which ran the usual gamut from joking to engaged to idiotic. There were even a few comments about similar coma experiences. One that struck me in particular was from Disqus member NoAZPhilsPhan:

I was in a 10 day coma, medically induced the last few days, after I passed away on the OR table during emergency surgery. Many of my organs, like my kidneys shut down. I remember walking down a very, very wide hallway. On each side there were massive doors that opened up to beautiful scenes like valleys, fields with lakes, tropical beaches and the like. I remember hearing someone playing the guitar and singing, over and over again, "Knock, knock, knockin' on Heaven's door". After a little while I realized it was a dear departed friend of mine who was a musician so I said "Bob, is that you?" ( I could not see him only hear him). He said "Yea, it's me buddy, but we don't need you right now why don't you go home." So I turned around and walked back.
I had many people say to me that it was an afterlife experience. I'm not so sure of that because all of this happened around Christmas time and during my coma I also helped Santa Claus deliver presents to Norway and England. Oh, by the way... those soda drinking polar bears are real as well.... I met them and we went sledding.

So, another whimsical coma-dream with classic near-death experience elements. Though he did see a dead friend, who told him a version of the usual, "It's not your time," he saw not angels, but pop culture icons. It's not surprising that so many people reject his rational interpretation of his experience, just as they reject my medically based explanation. If what he saw was a figment of his imagination, then maybe all those other NDEs with dead relatives and angels are also fantasies, as well.

As I detailed in my article, "Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience," in the current issue of Skeptical Inquirer, that may be because NDEs are manifestations of REM intrusion. In other words, they're all a kind of coma-dream. According to the REM intrusion theory, formulated by Professor Kevin Nelson, author of The God Impulse, people with forms of REM intrusion like sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming (in my case), are far more likely to experience an NDE. 60% of the 55 people in his study who had NDEs were prone to REM intrusion. Only 24% of the controls who had never had an NDE reported REM intrusion. While small, the results of the study are highly suggestive. This is a difficult subject to investigate, but I hope this study will only be the start.

REM intrusion is a phenomenon of blended dream states. Indeed, I actually experienced lucid dreaming within my NDE/coma-dream. Professor Nelson argues that REM intrusion explains the surreal aspects of NDEs. (He goes into the theory in much more detail in The God Impulse.) In short, it seems dreamlike because that's exactly what it is. And REM intrusion most certainly could account for the blended NDE of NoAZPhilsPhan.

Unless Heaven is not only "for real," but also is for the unreal.

Living with loss

Writing responses to my FOTMD friends in the nursing home. There were countless typos in my posts because it was so hard for me to hold the stylus at first.

When you are a pet owner, you know that they will inevitably break your heart by dying. You will always feel a pang of loss when you think of them, and it never gets any easier, no matter how many pets you lose. But that doesn't stop you from getting a new pet to fill that missing place in your heart. You know that the love you will give and the affection you will receive far outweighs the unavoidable pain at the end.

It's okay; that was just a metaphor for life. This is not a sappy homage to a lost pet, so put down that Kleenex!  

Living means learning to accept loss. Love affairs end; parents die. Some people crumble, but most soldier on. I've talked about how my resilience has aided in my recovery before. It has helped to deal with my lost abilities and the periodic setbacks along the way.

My first loss was of course my ability to walk. I guess that one wasn't hard to accept because I didn't have much choice in the matter. Feeling sorry for myself wouldn't have helped me to walk, obviously, so all I could do was try as hard as I could in my physical therapy.

I had been suffering from loss of equilibrium since I awoke from the coma. Since I couldn't walk, it was most apparent in the tilt-a-while sensation I felt when I was turned over in bed to prevent bedsores. When I finally started walking, it felt like mal debarquement syndrome--a extended bout of vertigo triggered by boat or plane travel--which I had been experiencing in Sicily, probably triggered by the twisty-turny roads when we stayed on Mt. Etna. My past bouts of mal debarquement had lasted months, so I wasn't that concerned about it. But after I got out of the nursing home and was able to see a neurologist, she told me that my vertigo was actually caused by stroke damage. This was a kind of second loss, since I had previously thought that I hadn't suffered any damage from the strokes. Though my vertigo has improved--from healing and also balance exercises--I still suffer from lack of balance. My neurologist thinks it will eventually go away completely, however.

My next loss came as I was preparing to return home on a furlough to work out any kinks in coping with my extremely limited mobility. Keith was forced to tell me that my cat Klaatu had died a few months before. Sorry, I did say this wasn't going to be about dead pets, but this is only a few paragraphs, and I promise it won't be sappy! He hadn't told me because I had enough to deal with trying to relearn how to walk or even sit unsupported.

Klaatu died suddenly, perhaps of a heart attack, so at least she didn't suffer. She always had an intense case of separation anxiety, so I had been eager to get back home to reassure her that I hadn't abandoned her, after leaving her for a full month on our trip to Sicily. Now she would never know. I couldn't stop crying about it. Sniff. Where is that Kleenex? Sorry again--I swear that's the last time! Of course, I knew that she wouldn't have understood that I couldn't help leaving home again after only a few days, but at least I would've been there for her once more. Keith told me that I paid a lot of attention to her in those few days home. I can't remember that time well because I became mentally altered as I developed sepsis. It was the sepsis that caused the strokes which led to my six-week coma.

Next came the hair loss due to the acute respiratory distress syndrome I suffered during the coma, along with the continual braiding and rebraided in the nursing home. I previous chronicled this sad tale in this blog. Though my hair is still fairly short, it's now back to its unnaturally thick glory. I decided not to grow it long again because I like not having to spend hours futzing with it to keep my hair from looking like a fright wig.

My most recent loss happened when the owner of Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer banned me from the website. FOTMD was the place where my friends had been lending me their support and prayers throughout my recovery. The whole story of why she banned me would take too long to go into here. This is the Reader's Digest version: Strumelia, as the owner calls herself, was at one point one of the people offering me support. Perhaps she eventually got tired of the length of my recovery. Apparently, she began to feel that I was trying to hijack threads to talk about my illness, as if that would even be a goal for me. This stemmed from a conversation that started with a friend referring to her rheumatoid arthritis in a video meant to raise awareness of lupus. I mentioned my own autoimmune disease. Though my coma and other related subjects were discussed, the conversation also drifted into depression and other hidden illness. Strumelia forbade from discussing my illnesses at all after that, which I found offensive. This is who I am now. Would she have banned me from mentioning that I'm Jewish? I said at the time that the whole kerfluffle stemmed from a colossal series of misunderstandings. I thought things were simmering down before she suddenly banned me.

I posted about this in a couple of dulcimer groups on Facebook, since that was the most efficient way to inform my Facebook dulcimer friends. I spent the rest of the day fielding IMs. I was flooded with support, not only from my friends, but many strangers, as well. This helped tremendously in dealing with my sense of loss. It felt like a death when Strumelia banned me. What's more, all my emails pertaining to my coma and the early days of my dermatomyositis vanished when she chose the nuclear option. I needed them for my memoir. An era of my life has not only passed, it was obliterated. Fortunately, I still have the memories, as well as the two threads where I received all that wonderfully kind support, which I had previously copied. I will soon be posting the first thread in this blog, which among other things chronicled my first steps in the nursing home. The threads were the precursor to this blog.

As in all my other losses, I will survive this, too. Just like a beloved pet, FOTMD has left a hole in my heart, but I will always love my FOTMD friends.

Keith's take

Some of my Facebook friends have had negative experiences with the medical system, so my link to my last post generated a lively discussion. Keith gave his very considered opinion on why patients who can't speak aren't given writing material (he's a writer too, after all). Here it is, by permission:

My theory is that it simply isn't anyone's job to listen to the patient and they don't have the time.

Of course they care. They are people, and that is what people do. 

But they are also professionals who are paid to do a job. When a health care worker comes into a patient's room, it is to do a specific job (give a treatment, turn the patient, take a reading, etc). They need to get in, do the job, and move on to their next patient. Input from the patient isn't important to the specific job they have to do, and in fact can be a distraction. 

I have only seen ICU, DOA, and nursing homes, but it is not the job of anyone in any of those facilities to listen to the patient or to observe the patient. The nurses, CNAs, doctors, and other technicians simply don't have time to wait for every patient they see to communicate via writing. Furthermore, the worker in a room with a patient at any given time is probably not going to be able to help with a specific request. The tech taking blood can't turn a patient or get pain medicine or a bedpan, and if they have to find the person who can that will take even more time. 

So, it is easier if the patient can't communicate. Not better for the patient, but easier.

It is a problem with our system in general, but it is no individual worker's fault. They are being paid to do a job and they do it.

Real friends

Kristi Keller and I were both wearing our FOTMD pins at the Harvest Festival of Dulcimers last September. Keith and I missed the festival the year before because it would've been hard for me to lug the respirator around the church grounds. ;-)

Yesterday, I copied the pages from the blog (Geekling Status Update) Keith started on Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer (FOTMD) to inform my friends about the dire situation I was in when I was in the coma. At the time, my condition looked hopeless. My FOTMD friends offered hopeful messages, condolences, and prayers. They did their best to buoy Keith's emotions through this nightmarish situation. I've only gotten hints at the kind of despair he went through as the doctors said there was no hope for my full recovery and referred to what would happen when, not if, I went into cardiac arrest. Keith is a highly rational person, and he based his hope not on emotion, but real evidence of my gradually improving awareness. At least some of my FOTMD friends, understandably, thought he was probably kidding himself, though they remained hopeful nonetheless. And when I did wake up from the coma, against all odds, they continued to offer us support and encouragement, not to mention innumerable virtual hugs. A few of them sent me get-well cards, which hung on the wall of my room in the nursing home, offering me tangible versions of those cyberspace hugs. Re-reading the posts as I saved them brought back the memories of how moved I felt when Keith told me about the love my FOTMD friends sent my way while I was the coma. It's returned a thousand percent; I'm smiling now as I type this. They have continued to stick by me during my long and difficult recovery.

FOTMD will soon be moving to a new web host. And due to the huge outpouring of support from my FOTMD friends, the two threads most concerned with my recovery, Greetings for Geekling--started by Carrie Barnes shortly after my awakening--and Gadding about with Geekling, are among the largest data hogs on the site. Strumelia, the founder of the site, asked members to remove any content that they no longer care about before the move. I do care--enormously--about these threads, as well as the posts in response to Geekling Status Update, but I realized that removing them would make the move easier and eliminate the cost of storing all of that data. So, I've been furiously saving the pages from the threads. I will eventually be posting the archival content on this blog for anyone who is interested, but an era in my life is about to come to an end.

On the Gadding about with Geekling thread, I've been posting photos taken during our rehab walks, accompanied by (usually) short essays about the day. I will soon be posting them here instead. For my Facebook friends who have been following my recovery and also giving me tremendous support, they will get a chance (if they so desire) to read my essays, which a number of my FOTMD friends enjoy, as well as see the additional photos that I post there. (Keith always posts some photos directly from his phone to Facebook.) I also post various recovery-related news on the "Gadding" thread that doesn't make it to this blog or Facebook, These tidbits might be of interest not only to my Facebook friends, but also to people experiencing their own recoveries, as well as their loved ones. Now, more people will be able to read these.

And my friends, who have stuck with me from the darkest days on, will still be there for me. Though I've never met most of the people on FOTMD following my recovery, they're very much real friends. Just like non-internet friends, they have put up with my kvetches, laughed at my jokes (or groaned), consoled me and continue to cheer me on. They're what puts the friends in Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer, and I'm more grateful to them than they will ever know. (I borrowed the smiley from FOTMD.)

I get by with a little help from my friends

During my recovery, my friends on Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer (FOTMD) and Facebook have been cheering me on through my many ups and downs. I can't tell you how pleased I am that my perseverance and emotional strength throughout these struggles has been inspirational for so many of them, but I wouldn't have been able to get through this without their encouraging posts and innumerable virtual hugs. Their support has been just as inspirational to me.

Along the way, I've left a trail of cyberspace bread crumbs worthy of Hansel and Gretel. It started with a blog Keith posted on FOTMD after I fell into a deep coma: Geekling Status Update, when it looked like I was unlikely to survive. Next came the thread that Carrie Barnes started to cheer me up in the nursing home after, against all odds, I awoke from the coma with all my mental faculties intact: Greeting for Geekling. (Note: The most interesting parts are near the beginning, when I was was taking my first steps and finally being allowed to eat food.) This blog contains my first posts after the awakening, when I could barely hold the stylus in my hand to peck out the words one letter at a time. I find the countless typos rather amusing, since I'm such a perfectionist.

As my strength grew, I started my own thread that became a blog of my continuing recovery: Gadding about with Geekling. The thread features many photos Keith took on our garden walks to improve my walking. At first, a four-wheeled rollator was too challenging for me. Later, when I was stable enough to keep the rollator from rolling away from me, I graduated from the two-wheeled walker I had been using, which allowed me to walk much farther. The pictures are another kind of log of my physical progress.

The prednisone I was taking for my autoimmune disease, dermatomyositis (DM), weakened my immune system and caused me to come down with Legionnaires' disease, which is what made me to fall into the coma in the first place. But when I wrote this blog about how I diagnosed my DM via Dr. Google, prednisone was still a godsend, since I had already sustained a great deal of muscle damage from the DM: I won the lottery, but what I got was no prize. Fortunately, my DM went into remission while I was in the coma. I'm stepping down from prednisone now, and I will soon be able to discontinue it completely. Besides the coma, prednisone has also given me severe osteoporosis. Before the advent of prednisone, DM was often fatal, but talk about double-edged swords!