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Lake Elmo woman makes miracle recovery from "brain dead"
St. Paul, MN -- How many people get a second chance at life? Rae Kupferschmidt has. In mid-January, the 65-year-old former medical secretary suffered a devasting cerebral hemorrhage, a massive bleeding on the brain.
"They thought I was dead," she says.
In fact, on January 17th, doctors declared her "brain dead." One word, "dead," is handwritten on that date on the calendar in Rae's room at United Hospital in Saint Paul. In that same hospital room where Rae fielded questions from reporters on Tuesday.
Clearly, Rae did not die, but even now, her family is not second-guessing the decision to disconnect life support. Medically, Rae was gone. Daughter Lisa Sturm is an operating room nurse at Regions Hospital in Saint Paul.
"So, I've seen many, many CT's and I never, ever saw one that looked like my mother's. Ever. It was black, meaning there was just so much blood in the head that you couldn't even see any anatomy of the brain," says Sturm.
