Another Patient "Awakens" -- Part One of Two

Editor's note. Please send me your thoughts on this incredible story at daveandrusko@hotmail.com

The human brain is so marvelously complex it always amazes me how definitively--and often quickly--diagnoses are made. Take the case of Raleane (Rae) Kupferschmidt of Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is so scary it's enough to chill your blood.

The good news is she is alive and expected to be walking on her own within a few weeks. The bad, bad news is…well, let double back for a second.

According to various newspaper and electronic media sources, on January 16 Rae's husband, Alan, couldn't wake his 65-year-old wife. The family rushed the mother of two to the hospital where they were told a CT scan had revealed that Rae had suffered a massive cerebral [brain] hemorrhage.

After Rae was wheeled into surgery, the family prayed, waited, and hoped. "The doctor came out in less than 20 minutes and told us there's nothing they can do," Alan Kupferschmidt told the [Minneapolis] Star Tribune. "There was no brain activity. She wouldn't come out of this.''

Rae's daughter, Lisa Sturm, filled in more details. "There's nothing we can do, the bleed is so bad and the pressure is so bad on her brain that she will never wake up and I'm sorry to tell you that. I mean those were his words exactly," Sturm told WCCO radio.

In accordance with Rae's living will, the family said, her breathing tube was removed. The story gets real interesting from this point on.

Reading the various accounts, the family does not explicitly say the hospital said this, but who else would have told them that Rae "had passed on,'' that "it was inevitable that she was going to die," but because "her heart was strong," she "likely could go on for a while.'' [According to the Star Tribune, "Maybe three days. Maybe four."]

So they took Rae home "to die."

It's important to understand that depending on which account you read, Rae was diagnosed to be "in a coma" or to be "brain dead." It is not unusual for media accounts to mix these two up--and throw in "unconscious" and "persistent vegetative state" to further confused categories.

But it wasn't just reporters. When a doctor from the hospital was interviewed by ABC's Good Morning America, he said that Rae had been "essentially brain dead."

However, Sturm told ABC News, "We weren't home three hours, and my mom started to wake up." Unfortunately, ABC News does not mention much of the most interesting part of the story.

"Sturm stayed by her mother's side," the Star Tribune reported. "She took a warm washcloth and wiped her face. When she placed an ice cube on her mother's lips, her mother began to suck on it."

"Sturm was startled but quickly remembered that suckling is a basic brain-stem function. 'Don't get excited,' she told herself. "And then suddenly, her mother 'almost sucked the ice cube right out of my hand.'"

Sturm drew close to Rae and said, "Mom, Mom. Are you in there? Her mother "mouthed the word 'yes,' and we all just about fell over."

Even so, the family thought to itself that this was that "short reprieve" that "doctors said might be possible" just before death. But after the moments stretched into days and Rae became more and more lucid ("She said she was thirsty. She smiled when the smell of pizza wafted through the house"), the family pivoted from planning Rae's funeral to taking her back to the hospital where two holes were drilled in her skull to drain the blood clot that had formed.

"You're not going to be thirsty or hungry if you're brain-dead,'' Sturm told the Star Tribune. "It was time to get the train turned around. This was no longer a hospice situation. This was recovery time.''

The story has a storybook ending. "I still don't know what my task is here on this Earth, but I know God's not done with me yet," Rae told WCCO. "How else could you explain everything that has happened to me?" she asked. Rae attributed her recovery "to the power of prayer."

But it is also a tribute to Lisa Sturm. Had she not stayed by her mother's side, washing Rae's face and whetting her lips, this story would not have had a happy ending.

Part Two