Man pronounced dead is wheeled in for organ donation. Then he opens his eyes during the procedure

Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II arrived at Baptist Health Richmond Hospital in Kentucky back in October 2021 after a drug overdose. Doctors said the 36-year-old man had died, so his sister Donna Rhorer told the hospital staff that her brother had signed up to donate his organs. But what came next shocked everyone and started investigations that are still going on today.

According to People, the hospital did something called an “honor walk” where family members walk alongside the patient as they go to the operating room one last time. While this was happening, Rhorer and other family members saw something strange. Her brother seemed to open his eyes. When they told the hospital workers, they were told not to worry because dead bodies sometimes move like that. But the family had a bad feeling about it.

Natasha Miller works as an organ preservationist, which means she helps keep donated organs safe for transplant. When Hoover came into the operating room, she knew right away that something was very wrong. “He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” she told NPR. “And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.” Two doctors in the room got so worried that they refused to do the surgery and left.

This is everyone’s worst nightmare

Miller says her boss got a call from the Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, or KODA for short, telling them to find a different doctor and keep going with the surgery. She also says they gave Hoover medicine to calm him down after he started moving. 

Finally, they stopped everything because “he was showing too many signs of life,” Rhorer said. She brought her brother back home and thought he would die soon. But here we are three years later, and Hoover is still living with his sister, even though he has trouble walking, talking, and remembering things.

A bunch of people who worked at KODA quit their jobs after this happened. Nyckoletta Martin was one of them. She talked to Congress in September about what she saw. “That’s everybody’s worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery and knowing that someone is going to cut you open and take your body parts out?” Martin said. “That’s horrifying.” In other cases, medical errors have led to people being pronounced dead only to wake up later, raising similar concerns about procedures.

KODA says none of this is true. Julie Bergin works as a top boss at Network for Hope, which is what KODA became after joining with another group. She said KODA never pushed anyone to take organs from people who were still alive. But the government is looking into what happened anyway. Both a federal health agency and Kentucky’s top lawyer are doing their own investigations.

The group that represents organ donation organizations wrote a letter about what happened. Their president, Dorrie Dils, said people need to trust the system when they sign up to donate organs. She claims that stories like this are scary and need to be checked carefully, and that “the process is sacred.” Medical emergencies and outdated rescue systems have also proven fatal in other troubling cases.

Rhorer says she feels angry and let down by what happened to her brother. “I feel betrayed by the fact that the people who were telling us he was brain dead and then he wakes up,” she said. “They are trying to play God.”