Written by Matthew Swigonski | Published
The narrator talks about an incident in October 2021 when a man in Kentucky, who was officially declared dead, woke up during an operation intended to remove his organs for donation. According to Nyckletta Martin, a former organ donor at Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), medical staff at the site were still instructed to attempt to harvest the organs, despite Hoover showing signs of life as he was wheeled into the operating room.
Three years after that shocking incident, Martin detailed the strange case in a letter to the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee in hopes of drawing attention to America’s organ procurement and transplant system.
The incident
The patient, Anthony Thomas ‘TJ’ Hoover II, 36, was rushed to Baptist Health Hospital in Richmond, Kentucky, following a drug overdose in which he went into cardiac arrest. One day, Hoover’s family decided to take him off life support after doctors declared the Kentucky man brain dead. According to Hoover’s sister, Donna Rhorer, doctors told the family that her brother was “not thinking” and that there were signs that “the brain wasn’t working, there were no brain waves,” despite Rhorer seeing her brother open his eyes.
In what is considered a routine surgical procedure, doctors then began examining Hoover’s vital organs, trying to determine which parts of the dead man’s brain could be donated. One of those key organ harvesting tests was a heart transplant, during which Hoover woke up before being put to sleep. According to Martin, it is reported that the doctors failed to inform the family about Hoover’s awakening.
Signs of Life
However, despite being continuously declared mentally dead, Hoover was still showing signs of life as KODA employee Natasha Miller wheeled him into the operating room. While recalling the October 2021 incident, Miller described in detail the moment Hoover suddenly awoke, catching the staff off guard. “He was walking around, hitting a little bit,” Miller said. “Like, you’re moving, you’re moving on the bed. When we passed by, you could see that tears were falling. He was clearly crying.”
When medical staff saw Hoover miraculously return to life, Miller says everyone in the operating room refused to continue the process of harvesting organs from a man they were sure was brain dead. After it became clear that the workers would not participate in the harvest, there was a momentary disagreement between the KODA director and the group’s coordinator.
Some Still Want to Continue
“So the coordinator calls the manager at that time. And he said he told her he had to ‘get another doctor to do it,'” Miller recalled. “That we were going to do this case. You need to find someone else. And he says, ‘There is no one else.’ The coordinator is crying because he is being scolded.”
After a tense period after the discovery, the organ harvest was finally stopped and Hoover began his long road to recovery. But the incident led to the resignation of many medical personnel involved in the case, including Martin and Miller, who said that KODA underestimated the incident. Martin says Hoover’s ordeal is “the worst nightmare of all,” describing the process of a medical team removing your private parts while you’re still alive as “terrifying.”
Although he was declared brain dead in 2021, Hoover continues to recover from his nearly fatal drug addiction, with Horror serving as his legal guardian. Right now, Rhorer says her brother faces a daily struggle to deal with ongoing problems with his speech, memory and movement. As of October 2024, there has been no official decision regarding Hoover’s case, although the federal Health Resources and Services Administration’s investigation is ongoing.
Source: NPR
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