Doctors call it a miracle. A Southern Colorado woman was in a vegetative state for more than six years, but now, she’s talking for the first time. She spoke exclusively to 11 News.
Christa Lilly had a heart attack then a stroke. That’s the last thing she remembers. It was November of 2000, when Lilly slipped into a vegetative state, which is essentially like a coma, but with the eyes open. Lilly was unconscious and unaware of her surroundings. Now, for the first time in six and a half years, she’s awake, alert, and talking. "I think it’s wonderful. It makes me so happy," Lilly tells us.
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The last time Lilly was aware of the world around her, Bill Clinton was in office and the September 11th attacks hadn’t even happened. Lilly was also surprised to find out her youngest daughter is now 12. "It’s kinda exciting," Chelcy says. She’s Christa’s daughter. And she’s also a grandmother of three, that’s new too. "Seeing her talking," Latiana says, is the greatest gift of all. She’s 6-years-old and the oldest of the grandchildren.
“To come back out of it… God is good," Minnie Smith, Lilly’s mother, says. She has been taking care of her all these years. She says this past Sunday, her prayers were answered. "Every morning, I always check on her when I wake up, before I go to the bathroom. I always say, ‘Hi baby, how are you doing?’ She said, ‘I’m fine’ and that’s when I knew she was awake." A two-word answer that changed everything.
Lilly says her biggest frustration is learning how to talk again. "I’ve been eating cake." Eating is no problem for this woman, who had been kept alive by a feeding tube.
“This is a miracle,” Lilly’s neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, tells us. He checked to see her how her brain is functioning. He says he’s as surprised as everyone else. "This is all mystical and I can’t explain it."
[Via Secondhand Smoke]
PVS? Not persistent or vegetative – well I guess two out of three ain’t bad. It is interesting that the doctor resorts to the mystical to explain it.
21 comments
I think you’ve got a troll, Mr. Jester…..
Or he’s rude to retarded folks because he feels threatened by their mental ablities.
It’s not interesting that doctors’s resort to the mystical to explain something unknown, it’s basic human reaction. Whenever science has failed to explain something, people have often credited the supernatural. Of course, as science marches forward, the area where a “god” can act has been reduced. Since science cannot currently explain this, we credit god. We will do so until science finds an answer.
Speaking of miracles, did you know your god has never cured a single amputee from one of America’s wars?
How miserable it must be to go through life playing “Gotcha!”.
+JMJ+
Actually, Hoodlum, that is not true. An amputee WAS cured–the limb regrew miraculously–I will try to look it up; I came across it just last week. And how about the girl born without corneas who could see after visiting Padre Pio? Gee, if you are going to diss on something, at least check some facts first.
Praise God for the lady in the coma–what a blessing to her family, and especially for her dear mother who cared for her all these years.
ah, Neo the Gnostic returns to amuse us with his oh so wry observations. The doctor is making excuses there, Neo? Hmmm. Try this one, your pitifully small worldview cannot tolerate the possibility of miracles, let alone the supernatural. If these exists then your self-serving, self-worshipping days have to go. I would not imagine your gnosticism would allow you to endure such a horror. You frequently haunt us to remind us how small minded you think we are; perhaps that would be what we call in the psychological fields ‘transferrence’. I like you in an odd way, Hoodlum…I’m not sure why…but I’m sure you’re the type I could knock a few brewskis with and have an interesting conversation. But as I don’t drink or live anywhere near Philadelphia…….
Bill, I plan to teach, hence my remark. I was educating Jeff on basic sociology. Sociology explains a lot about religion. For example, the battling between more traditional elements of the Catholic church, say Jeff here, and Gerald of Closed Cafeteria, and the more liberal Catholics is largely explained by the process of secularization of religion, which shows how religion schism.
No FR BP, the doctor is behaving as a human being normally does when confronted by the unknown.
As for my disbelief in the miracles, it has to do with the fact that nothing truly miraclous occurs. Let me explain- 1 coma patient waking up is, while uncommon, explainable, in most cases, by medicine. Now, if all coma patients were to wake-up on the same day, hell even the same year, I’d concede something was up. But it never happens.
Philadelphia? trying to track me down from my comments? I am from Bmore, but I travel around the mid atlantic a lot for my work. You pay, I’ll drink 🙂
If you’re going to become a teacher, Hoodlum, you’d better get over your dislike for retarded people. (I’m referring to your story of dissing a retarded customer, which you posted on your blog.) You also might consider whether you really want to do a WHOLE lot of unpaid overtime, since you told your boss off for not paying you enough for your current work. I’d also get rid of your current blog if I were you. Many school administrators could use some of your anecdotes against you (hiring or firing).
Hoodlum,
Why do you, a disbeliever in miracles, get to determine what constitutes a miracle or not?
What,Hoodlum put down a retarded person?! As the mother of a child with Down Syndrome, I protest! She knows and loves Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, at age four, which is something I pray you learn to do someday soon. Then the sniping will stop, for you’ll have inner peaces, Hoodlum.
As for the woman in a coma, it IS rather amazing that medical experts are so quick to say “irreversable” when they really mean “expensive”. This isn’t the first time that someone has woken from a long coma nor, I hope, the last. But it does seem that the patients who recover are those whose families are willing to wait and hope.
Lizbette, I read about more than one regrowth many years ago. I believe it was in one of my cousin’s medical tomes. I particularly recall that toes and fingers usually had no nails when they were examined.
I wonder how many people actually pray for such a thing as regrowth. In my own family, my cousin’s oldest son was hit by a drunkdriver while stalled on a mountain road. He woke up (from a week’s coma) without a leg. I don’t think any of us worried about his leg as much as his survival. The fact that he had no brain damage was absolutely the icing on the cake.
It’s really sad….I think Hoodlum needs some loving he missed out on as a child…and an adult for that matter. May the Holy Spirit come to you and soften your cold, black heart.
Love,
KT
This story is yet another example as to why certain laws that disregard the right to life are dangerous (such as Futile Care Law in Texas). As for the comments regarding disabilities, all I know is that I have many friends with disabilities living full and productive lives (including myself) . As MissJean put it- it is her cousin’s oldest son’s life that they were worried about, not his leg. This is the kind of perspective one gets after a loved one goes through these kinds of experiences.
… now, she’s talking for the first time. She spoke exclusively to 11 News.
On a lighter note, did anyone else do a double-take at this juxtaposition?
MissJean, they want retards treated as equals, so I treated that guy as an equal.
Also, I am sure somewhere somebody missing a limb has prayed to have it back, and god has never answered a single prayer.
Andy, its common sense. If science can explain something, however rare or unusual the occurance, than its clearly not a miracle.
Kevin, shocking as this may sound, I am not a monster.
Ruth, Futile Care Laws are no matter for your messiah. If your god wanted them to live, they would live. Geez, do Catholics even read Psalm 139 anymore?
Leticia, I treat retards far better than Jesus, whom clearly hates them because he’s never cured any of them.
Bill, I plan to teach
Another reason I’ll be home schooling.
Paul, don’t worry about it. People like Hoodlum rarely even make it through the year-long student teaching process. Teaching requires patience and more than a modicum of respect for even the most trying students.
MissJean, not at a Catholic school. I don’t even need a certification to teach a the plethora of hiring Catholic schools. 🙂 Nor, thanks to the selectiveness of Catholic schools, have to deal with common hoodlums, retards, or others with severe disabilities.
Great stuff. Throwing you a link.
Fairly obvious that you have no idea what the catholic dioceses in your region have to offer Hoodlum, even with the financial challenges facing them these days. My wife and I just visited one of several wonderful *catholic* elementary and high schools in that Archdiocese that do serve the disabled or the “retarded” as you put it. I bet you have never even heard of the Saint Anthony program and schools in the Diocese of Pittsburgh or what is available in the Diocese of Allentown and Trenton. Additionally, my daughter goes to another school in the Diocese of Camden that has one of the best pre-school programs for children with autism in the region (in my admittedly biased opinion given the wonders that they have done for her when the publics said she’d never ever utter a single word). Funny thing there… the first time she spoke, and a number of words at that, was the very next day after my parents made a special trip to a Shrine to the Virgin Mary, the “White Madonna”…
Speaking of miracles, I think the author who wrote the Song of Bernadette said it best: “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible”.
Sailorette, he’s socially inept and angry, that’s all. He also is trying out all his erroneous information out on us before he takes it on the road.
Hoodlum, you need a teaching certificate to teach in ANY school. Try looking up the No Child Left Behind Act. And Catholic schools routinely teach special ed students, many with state-mandated materials and funds from state grants. Again, you’re just being a jerk.
Remember that lesbian ex-Israeli soldier? You blogged that she was so much cooler than your friends. Maybe that was your cue to get out more and make new friends, instead of trolling cyberspace trying to make enemies.
“For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.”
Please correct me if I”m wrong, but I think this quote is from DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST by Bernanos.