Stanford Medicine story on surviving brain injury wins health journalism award
Congrats to my colleague Ruthann Richter, whose Stanford Medicine magazine story “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” has won an Award for Excellence from the Association of Health Care Journalism.
Ruthann’s in good company – other winners include writers for the New York Times and Time magazine.
Here’s a bit of what the judges had to say about the story:
Ruthann Richter met the subject of her riveting article in 2000 and finally told her remarkable tale more than a decade later. Deborah Shurson fell 2,600 feet to earth in a 1982 skydiving accident and astonished her doctors, friends and loved ones by surviving… There’s no fairy-tale ending here – but a sympathetic and truthful description of the struggles that begin once doctors have exhausted their magic.
As the magazine’s editor, I couldn’t agree more.
Previously: The Woman Who Fell to Earth and Surviving survival: The new Stanford Medicine magazine is out
July 4th, 2012 at 8:49 am
Miracles like us, happen everyday. I survived 41 cognitive challenges/head injuries with the first being a three-month coma at age 12 in Arkansas. We are “we are more than conquerors through Christ.”.
July 6th, 2012 at 8:01 am
My husband works tirelessly to make sure that others don’t have to deal with cognitive challenges/head injuries, challenges is a more humane definition than injuries. He was cognitively challenged as a child at age 12 in 1977. He survived a three month coma. His recovery though about 85-90% is better than some, but worse for some. He activates, demonstrates, educates, initiates, motivates, stimulates, & validates that some cognitive challenges may be conquered. Like he states “If you don’t try then you won’t fly”. It is very difficult to keep employment, but he tries. He has recently been invited to speak at the 19th Annual Pediatric Nursing Conference at Akron, OH, but couldn’t raise the funds to go. He was nominated for the Robert L Moody Prize for Distinguished Initiatives in Brain Injury Rehabilitation & Research. He was also nominated for the “Use your Life Award” of Oprah’s. He was also nominated for the Joseph P. Kennedy Award. He has spoken on his (41) cognitive challenges & how he conquered them.