Kentucky man’s organs nearly harvested after mistakenly declared dead

[IceIce9]

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5113976

Natasha Miller's job is to preserve organs after they've been removed from a donor. She was getting ready to do this for a drug overdose victim who had just been wheeled into an operating room in Kentucky, when she realized something wasn't right.

NATASHA MILLER: He was moving around, kind of thrashing - like, moving, thrashing around on the bed. And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.

Miller says the donor's condition alarmed everyone in the operating room at the Baptist Health Richmond hospital in Richmond, Kentucky. The two doctors present refused to go ahead with the organ retrieval.

 

[IceIce9]

Kentucky family fights for reform after man wakes up during organ donor surgery

“He made several attempts to say, ‘Hey, I’m here’. But it was kind of ignored."

www.wkyt.com

“We had his honor walk Friday afternoon. During his honor walk, his eyes started opening up. He was tracking. His eyes were tracking us around. We were told it was just reflexes, just a normal thing. Who are we to question the medical system?”

TJ was then taken into organ retrieval surgery.

“He made several attempts to say, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ But it was kind of ignored. They finally stopped the procedure because he was showing too many signs of life,” Rhorer said.

Rhorer didn’t learn of these details until January of this year, when Nyckoletta Martin, who was working with Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates at the time, contacted her. She and other witnesses came forward this year, with their testimonies heard before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in September

“It’s not infrequent that something comes up around the donor and whether or not the donor is dead. The problem is we’ve had 40 years where there has been no oversight at all of OPOs. (Organ Procurement Organizations),” said Dr. Seth Karp, the Surgeon-in-Chief at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office said they are now looking into this case

 

[amandab]

Well this is just about terrifying.

 

[LoveyG]

I wonder if the patient remembers any of this, even just on a subconscious level? Such as his Honor Walk and the people around him talking about him being dead and harvesting his organs. How traumatic!

 

[GeorgiaRai]

When my son's girlfriend died earlier this year, the extremely thorough procedures the hospitals (2) followed to confirm was reassuring and comforting. The OPO statement quoted in the article was exactly what we saw: living patients are cared for by doctors; OPOs only get involved after the patient's medical team has declared death.

The brain is miraculous & complicated, and I don't doubt that completely unexpected levels of recovery can happen. I do doubt that there is widespread refusal by doctors and nurses to acknowledge signs of life just so another organization can receive donated organs. JMO.