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Hi,

Here's another story showing that the "all-knowing" docs are quite often
wrong when the pronounce some patient as "brain-dead," which is just a
convenient label created so that patient's organs could be harvested.
Death is death, meaning no heart beating, no breathing, no signs of life
at all. While it is true that the brain can be damaged severely, if the
patient is alive, they are disabled, brain-injured, but not "dead."

See article below.

Best wishes!

If people contemplate and really see the sanctity of life, their
"quality of life" arguments fall away and they will understand that we
are here to care for each other, not to kill each other. Caring, and not
convenience, is the sign of a civilized and just society!


Ron Panzer
for Hospice Patients Alliance
http://www.hospicepatients.org

"What I do you cannot do
but what you do, I cannot do.
The needs are great, and none of us,
including me, ever do great things.
But we can all do small things, with great love,
and together we can do something wonderful." - Mother Teresa

*************************************************

The Hospice Patients Alliance is a 501(c)(3) charitable patient advocacy
organization acting to preserve the original hospice mission and to
promote quality end-of-life services.



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Lake Elmo woman makes miracle recovery from "brain dead"

By Allen Costantini, KARE 11 News
Feb 13, 2008

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=498009


St. Paul, MN -- How many people get a second chance at life? Rae
Kupferschmidt has. In mid-January, the 65-year-old former medical
secretary suffered a devasting cerebral hemorrhage, a massive bleeding
on the brain.

"They thought I was dead," she says.

In fact, on January 17th, doctors declared her "brain dead." One word,
"dead," is handwritten on that date on the calendar in Rae's room at
United Hospital in Saint Paul. In that same hospital room where Rae
fielded questions from reporters on Tuesday.

Clearly, Rae did not die, but even now, her family is not
second-guessing the decision to disconnect life support. Medically, Rae
was gone. Daughter Lisa Sturm is an operating room nurse at Regions
Hospital in Saint Paul.

"So, I've seen many, many CT's and I never, ever saw one that looked
like my mother's. Ever. It was black, meaning there was just so much
blood in the head that you couldn't even see any anatomy of the brain,"
says Sturm..

In grief, Alan Kupferschmidt took his wife of 45 years back to Lake Elmo
so she could take her last breath in her own bed. The house was soon
full of friends and family who came to say goodbye. Rae says she is glad
she was unconscious while everyone was mourning what they thought was
her inevitable death.

"If I had seen all the tears and the gnashing of teeth and all that
stuff, I'd have felt bad," she says.

As it was, the family began planning Rae's funeral, believing the end
was just hours away. Then, Lisa tried to wet her mother's lips.

"When I touched her mouth with the ice cube and then a second time and
then I asked if she was in there and she shook her head, yes and mouthed
the word, yes," Sturm says.

At first, Lisa did not believe her mother was waking from her coma. She
knew that terminal patients can seem to waken for a moment before death,
but Rae began talking. Alan's roller-coaster of emotions suddenly sped
upwards on a hill.

"For her to start talking to us and everything working, she wasn't
paralyzed. She just kept climbing the ladder," he says.

It was a ladder back to awareness after being given up for dead. Rae sat
up in her room. A prayer shawl covered her legs. She knitted many such
shawls for others in distress but never thought she would need one
herself. Rae says she does not remember anything that occurred during
the coma.

"I remember my daughter, Lisa, asking me questions about angels," says Rae.

Lisa wondered what her mother was seeing in the room at home. Rae says
she did see angels, but no one she recognized. "I said these angels are
not here to take me home to my father. They're here to help me, to help
me get over this," says Rae.

Doctors at United Hospital, including Physical Medicine physician Brad
Helms are amazed by Rae's recovery.

"This is extremely unusual. It's virtually never heard of. You have some
people who get better after a bleed, but in Rae's case, she was
essentially brain dead and when she was in the intensive care unit, just
was not responding to any sort of stimuli or any sort of activity. I've
been here since 1999 and this is the first case like this I've seen,"
says Dr. Helms.

Rae has been undergoing physical therapy twice a day for three weeks.
Dr. Helms expects her to be able to walk unaided in a few months. He
says she has the possibility of a full recovery.

Rae and Alan have a zest for life that has carried them across the
globe. They are continuing plans for a "roadtrip" to Washington, D.C.
and Williamsburg, Virginia in May. Then, they plan to tour Greece in
October. Rae Kupferschmidt intends to make good use of her second chance
at life.

Others may call her survival a "miracle." She does not.

"I'm not a miracle lady. I am just a very blessed lady that God chose
not to be done with," says Rae.