A supposedly brain dead man being wheeled into organ donation surgery… only for him to wake up on the operating table.
Thomas ‘TJ’ Hoover II, 36, was being ‘honor walked’ at Baptist Health Richmond Hospital in Kentucky in October 2021, in video that’s just emerged.
The practice sees loved ones and hospital staff line up to cheer and honor a patient who has been taken off life support as they’re wheeled away for organ removal surgery.
But Hoover, who’d been hospitalized after an overdose, wasn’t dead at all.
Moments later, he would begin trying to pull his own teeth out after waking up on the operating table as surgery began.
Hoover’s sister Donna Rhorer told Fox56 said they were told their loved one ‘had no reflexes, no responses, no brainwaves, no brain activity’ before they decided to remove him off life support.
The hospital staff even did an honor walk for Hoover – a tradition that sees nurses and other employees line up to show respect for organ donors as they are wheeled into surgery.
Footage shows Hoover being pushed in a hospital bed as his heartbroken relatives say their goodbyes ahead of what they believed would be a final procedure.
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But once on the surgical table, Hoover started thrashing around, crying and trying to pull his teeth out as surgeons prepared to harvest his body parts, according to former Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates employee Nyckoletta Martin.
Then, as the surgeons prepared to remove his organs, Hoover began ‘moving around’ and ‘was crying visibly,’ according to Natasha Miller, another former employee.
Miller said that when her colleague called KODA – which had coordinated the transplant- the supervisor told them they were ‘going to do this case’ anyway and the hospital needed to ‘find another doctor.’
