Vegetable Women Awakens
A woman who went into a vegetative state more than six years ago awoke this week for three days and spoke with her family and a local television station before slipping back."I'm fine," Christa Lilly told her mother on Sunday _ her first words in eight months. She has awakened four other times for briefer periods since suffering a heart attack and stroke in November of 2000.
"I think it's wonderful. It makes me so happy," Lilly told television station KKTV-TV. She also got to see youngest daughter, Chelcey, now 12 years old, and three grandchildren.
Before her relapse on Wednesday, Lilly told the station her biggest frustration was learning how to talk again.
After years of being fed from a tube, eating was no problem. "I've been eating cake," she said.
Her neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, said he couldn't explain how or why she awoke.
"I'm just not able to explain this on the basis of what we know about persistent vegetative states," he said.
Meanwhile, Terri Schiavo is still dead. The doctor noted:
... unlike the much publicized case of Terri Schiavo, Lilly is minimally conscious.Yet this is the same doctor who was "not able to explain" why or how Lilly was waking up, so if the docs point in bringing up Terri was to say that she never would have awoken I'd have to reply that this doctor isn't even capable of explaining why Lilly can wake up. But thanks to the liberal culture of death we'll really never know whether Terri would've gotten up.
