miracle 2: window washer

More on the good news front, this story from a few months ago:

US doctors say they have never seen anything like it: A window washer who fell 47 stories from the roof of a Manhattan skyscraper is now awake, talking to his family and expected to walk again.

Alcides Moreno, 37, plummeted almost 152 metres in a December 7 scaffolding collapse that killed his brother. Somehow, Moreno lived, and doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Centre announced that his recovery has been astonishing.

He has movement in all his limbs. He is breathing on his own. And on Christmas Day, he opened his mouth and spoke for the first time since the accident. His wife, Rosario Moreno, cried as she thanked the doctors and nurses who kept him alive.

"Thank God for the miracle that we had," she said. "He keeps telling me that it just wasn't his time."

Dr Herbert Pardes, the hospital's president, described Moreno's condition when he arrived for treatment as "a complete disaster". Both legs and his right arm and wrist were broken in several places. He had severe injuries to his chest, his abdomen and his spinal column. His brain was bleeding. Everything was bleeding, it seemed. In those first critical hours, doctors pumped 24 units of donated blood into his body - about twice his entire blood volume. They gave him plasma and platelets and a drug to stimulate clotting and stop the haemorrhaging. They inserted a catheter into his brain to reduce swelling and cut open his abdomen to relieve pressure on his organs.

Moreno was at the edge of consciousness when he was brought in. Doctors sedated him, performed a tracheotomy and put him on a ventilator. His condition was so unstable, doctors worried that even a mild jostle might kill him, so they performed his first surgery without moving him to an operating room. Nine orthopaedic operations followed to piece together his broken body.

Yet, even when things were at their worst, the hospital's staff marvelled at his luck. Incredibly, Moreno's head injuries were relatively minor, for a fall victim. Neurosurgeon John Boockvar said the window washer also managed to avoid a paralysing spinal cord injury, even though he suffered a shattered vertebra.

"If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one," said the hospital's chief of surgery, Dr Philip Barie.

I agree.

miracle 1: little goddess

I've been scrolling back through my drafts to see which I still want to complete, so don't be surprised if a few older subjects turn up in the next week or so.


This story made me smile. Imagine taking your wife to the hospital for a routine caesarean birth, only to have the doctor emerge to tell you that it's a miracle that your wife, or your baby daughter, are alive. What could have been the tragedy of these people's lives is now their miracle.

Ovarian pregnancies are the rarest form of ectopic pregnancies (one in 40,000 births). Basically the egg fails to reach the uterus and fertilises in the ovary instead. This kind of pregnancy is usually terminated before 10 weeks because it is life-threatening to the mother.

Durga Thangarajah is the only child in Australia -- and possibly the world -- to survive a full-term ovarian pregnancy.

But the healthy 2.8kg bundle was yesterday oblivious to all the fuss caused by her remarkable entry into the world at 8.47am Thursday.

"This form of pregnancy is rare enough, but to have it full-term is unheard of," said obstetrician Andrew Miller, from Darwin Private Hospital.

"I have never come across it in any hospital . . .

"It truly is a miracle she got a living baby out of it."

Though the meaning (goddess) is nice, the name Durga is kind of bleh. Maybe they should have done for Mahima...Hindi for 'miracle'.

pure sound osaka

This video is for Roofshadow and Industrial Athena. Remember what a jumbled obstacle course Pure Sound in America-mura used to be? Have a look at it now!

How did they achieve this miracle, you ask? They moved all the indies music downstairs into the music store, which is now at least half indies.