Be careful who you bury...

As Raleane (Rae) Kupferschmidt lay motionless in her hospital bed, family and friends said their final goodbyes and the funeral home was called.

But just as the grieving began in her Lake Elmo home, Kupferschmidt woke up from her coma.

"There's no medical explanation for what happened to my mother,'' said Kupferschmidt's daughter, Lisa Sturm, who is a surgical technician at Regions Hospital. "It's a miracle."

I'm sure Mrs Kupferschmidt's daughter is totally correct. She has ruled out any naturalistic, medical explanation based on her years of experience in related research fields and clinical settings.

Or is this just a defense mechanism, a result of the inevidible psychological trauma of having almost accidentally buried mom alive?!?!?

[Source of story]

[Hat tip: CMF]

Categories

More like this

... if you live in Baltimore ... Details and a poll for you to take: An art teacher at Baltimore's Reginald F. Lewis High School says she was beaten by a student in her classroom in an attack that was recorded on a cell phone camera. Jolita Berry says the attack happened Friday. The chief of the…
Today, I'm leaving for The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas. I can't wait to get there. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel! While I'm there I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic…
To those of you who come here to read my views on science and religion and politics, this post will probably come as something of a shock. But in the process of dealing with a very painful situation, my thoughts have turned inward. That turning inward is fueled also by the fact that next week will…
This sort of thing makes one wonder if the personification of Death should in fact be a cat, although, oddly enough, not a black cat: Oscar the rescue cat is not simply a welcome feline companion at the Steere nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. According to a new report in a medical…

That's crazy. I'm only a lowly ambulance attendant, but even I know how to tell if someone is really dead. You would think a surgical technician would know better.

Brian,

Are you sure?

But seriously, two things to keep in mind: 1: Even a lowly ambulance attendant has the benefit of experience and training based on science. (I don't assume this doctor really even looked at the woman, based on the description) and 2: While it is true that from my perspective, this is in my own neighborhood (sort of) at a national scale, how many people are thought of as dead for a few minutes then the wake up? My grandmother used to do this a few times a day. She'd wake up and she'd be the one who thought she was dead... (But that's another story)

Anyway, right, with 300,000,000 people in the country, it is surprising that we don't have two or three stories like this per month.

"It's a miracle that those doctors were available in the hospital" notes local crazy person...

They wouldn't have buried her until she'd been clinically dead. It's pretty unlikely that her heart would've restarted on its own, so there was no risk of burying her alive.

These sort of incidents do make me question the diagnosing of brain death though. Was this an accidental misdiagnosis or did the doctors 'go by the book'? There's no point in keeping anyone 'alive' if they will never regain consciousness and personally I think that active euthanasia would be perfectly acceptable, even preferable, in some cases (e.g. Terri Schiavo), but how will you know in cases like this?

Is it just me, or do these praiseth' lord whacko's come out of the woodwork everytime some dumb, simple shit like medical mystery comes about? Have you noticed the trend these last few weeks on every channel--every time some unexplained shit happens--to 'thank g-d' and 'because of the miracle of Jeebus'.....
Here is what's wrong, and wronggggg in Florida: just the other day, some mush-mouthed lord praiser was carjacked, and in her interview she wuz praisin', and overparayin'--she shoulda thanked the car manufacturer:
http://www.local6.com/firstnews/15294090/detail.html

By the real cmf (not verified) on 16 Feb 2008 #permalink