BRAIN DEAD WOMAN RECOVERED

Lake Elmo family thought woman was brain dead, but she recovered 
StarTribune
startribune.com
Feb. 12, 2008

LAKE ELMO, Minn. - Raleane "Rae" Kupferschmidt's loved ones were planning her funeral and saying their last goodbyes when the 65-year-old appeared to wake up from her coma.

Doctors had told the family that Kupferschmidt, who had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, might have a "lucid moment" shortly before passing away.

"We saw it as a gift," said Alan Kupferschmidt, Rae's husband.

But when doctors said such moments only last up to 20 minutes and Rae's lasted a weekend, Alan Kupferschmidt knew his wife might not be brain dead if allowed to live.

"'We've got to turn this train around,' I said, 'because hospice is a one-way track to the funeral home, and Rae's not ready to go," he recalled.

This week the Kupferschmidts are planning for Rae's homecoming from the hospital four weeks after they had planned her funeral.

What the family considers a miracle began after doctors removed Rae's breathing tube and waited for her to die. The family held a prayer service and had already begun the grieving process, daughter Lisa Sturm said.

The family took Rae home Jan. 18 to make her comfortable before she died. Sturm said she used an ice cube to wet her mother's dry lips when her mother sucked on the ice cube.

"I knew suckling is a very basic brain stem function, so I didn't get real excited. But when I did it again she just about sucked the ice cube out of my hand, and I looked at my aunt and said, 'Did you see that?'" Sturm said.

"So I leaned down and asked, 'Mom... Mom, are you in there?'" Sturm said. "And when she shook her head and mouthed, 'Yes,' we all just about fell over."

Rae Kupferschmidt, who has since had surgery to drain the excess blood from her skull, said she doesn't remember much from that weekend home from the hospital. But she and her family say they now see every day as a divine gift.

"I still don't know what my task is here on this Earth, but I know God's not done with me yet. How else could you explain everything that has happened to me?" she asked.