TJ Hoover was declared brain dead after suffering an overdose in October 2021, but his sister Donna Rhorer says doctors attempted to harvest his organs while he was still showing signs of life.
Rhorer says TJ’s eyes were open and tracking movement during his honor walk, when family members gather to say goodbye before organ donation surgery.
“Almost immediately as soon as his honor walk started, his eyes were opened, and they were tracking, looking around at the people that were there,” Rhorer said.
This smells all kinds of weird.
“Almost immediately as soon as his honor walk started, his eyes were opened, and they were tracking, looking around at the people that were there,” Rhorer said.
…and you didn’t draw attention to that? That’d be a pretty solid cue to stop the honor walk and get the doc over. Also none of the techs/nurses/doctors noticed??
TJ’s declaring physician believed he showed too many signs of life to continue with the surgery, but KODA wanted to proceed anyway.
…and you still declared it, and didn’t raise a stink with patient advocacy or the head of the hospital? Or the individual surgeons on the harvest team?
They also don’t mention how far they got in the surgery. Like was the anesthesiologist starting to intubate him and noticed his eyes moving and called for a stop before n incision was made? Or were they a kidney or two into the operation?
I’ve been scrubbed into two organ harvest surgeries; I’ve been scheduled for five - the other three canceled because the patient didn’t meet the super strict criteria as they died. Hospitals are all about covering their ass to avoid situations like the one reported. They’ll push you to cut corners on things like room turnover time (which is still fucked) but not things that put them in situations like this.
I’m not familiar with KODA or “Network for Hope”, so maybe they’re just extra shitty, but take this one with a mountain of salt.
Organ harvests are super important procedures - we don’t just have a backstock of healthy livers in the OR core; there’s a backlog of deathly ill patients clinging to the hope that their phone rings with news of a match. People are already hesitant to sign up as donors because surgery is genuinely scary as fuck; we don’t need half-assed journalism pouring fuel on that fire. If shit is actually happening, by all means report on it, but give enough details to make it credible… or if it’s a nothingburger that you’re hyping up for clicks, maybe shut the fuck up, cuz that’ll prolong peoples’ misery / get them killed.
Can you talk about the two surgeries you have been a part of? Also, I never thought about that: they give the dead patients anesthesiology? Why?
Sure!
Anesthesiologists are known primarily for preventing sensation and awareness, but they manage pretty much all of your body’s functions including things like respiration and blood pressure. The conversation about the degree of intervention needed for an organ donor is riddled with an absolute fuckton of conjecture, so if you want to go down that rabbit hole, be mindful of whether or not you’re reading a credible source.
Studies in the National Library of Medicine are my personal go-to: here’s a good one on this topic: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10355135/ (Crtl+F “Preoperative Role of the Anesthesiologist for Organ Procurement After Brain Death” to jump to the bit that specifically addresses your question).
Reading that, it sounds like anesthesiologists are the primary authority on verifying the legal checkmarks for verification of brain or cardiac death, and ultimately giving the thumbs up or down for the surgery to proceed. I didn’t know this - my assumption was that it was the primary care doc’s responsibility… so my initial post here probably should have chewed out the anesthesiologist too.
The ones I was in… so I’m a surgical technologist - recently posted a breakdown of my job here. Both of them were brain death due to drug overdose. Organ harvests vary a lot depending on which organs are actually being harvested. The first one I was in was after the pancreas, liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart, so as the tech I had to set up for and do 5 different surgeries at the same time. Each organ system had its own surgeon come in from the donor organization (both of mine were under Life Share). All of them want to move fast to keep the organ tissue as healthy as possible so it stays viable for the recipient, so I felt like the octopus dude from Spiderman madly passing and receiving a slurry of scalpels, hemostats, scissors, and ties. We had 4 ‘slushers’ running to produce sterile ice which we poured a lot into the abdominal and thoracic cavities; and more into basins for the organs to be placed in once they were removed.
As each doc finished, they broke scrub and left immediately with the organ, which was transported straight to the recipient site at some other hospital (iirc the heart was transported by helicopter), so it went from being absolute madness to a kind of eerie stillness. Seeing the donor on the OR bed with the cavities fully exposed and completely empty was pretty unnerving. We did a final sponge/sharps/instrument count (which is done in every surgery to ensure nothing gets left in the wound [every policy has a terrifying backstory]). Sutured the incisions closed, but with much larger ‘bites’ than normal and all with one running stitch (vs an ‘interrupted’ stitch where each one has its own length of suture). I think from the OR, the body goes to mortuary or something for postmortem care to make it look as presentable as possible for a funeral - so that stitch is probably removed, and the cavities packed with something to fill in the empty space, but I’m not involved in that part of it, so, speculating on that last bit.
Second one was mostly the same, except they only took the pancreas, kidneys, and liver - other organs were deemed nonviable for whatever reason.
In both of them, we were present for the honor walk, and they told us a bit about the patient. The OR side of things is a mad dash for tissue preservation sake, but the process as a whole was very sensitive to the human side of things. One of the cool things they did in both was asked the family what kind of music the patient liked, and they played it over the OR room speakers through the entire operation. We also got to meet the family, which is about the only time a surg tech ever gets to do that. Typically we’re in the actual OR all day - before the case when the doc is talking to you, we’re in the room setting up the instruments and such; and afterward we’re still in the room tearing down and setting up for the next one. The organ harvests were much more personal.
Happy to answer any questions, but keep in mind as the tech I’m the literal rock-bottom of the OR food chain, so some of my answers might be “No idea!” followed by speculation.
That was an awesome read, thank you!
Probably to suppress involuntary reflexes, I’m not a doctor
That’s a fucking nightmare. Definitely in my top fears, waking up on a surgery table
Not just the surgery table, but the organ harvesting table.
If anyone would like to learn more about the powers that be that resulted in this disaster, here’s an article that goes over how the orgs that manage organ donation, inducing pressure on medical staff and introduce a conflict of interest.
Kentucky organization allegedly began harvesting organs from people who may not have been dead.
No shit
How else can you guarantee freshness?
Makes me reconsider being an organ donor. They were trying to “euthanize” him to sell his organs. This was attempted murder for profit.
The sad thing is we desperately need people to stay organ donors if organ transplants that save lives are to stay a thing and these ethical catastrophes that should lead to mass arrests instead end with people leaving the registry and seemingly 0 consequences for the ghouls that caused the issue…
It’s not unlikely this will cause shortages for people in need that was completely preventable due to greed and capitalism.
Spot on. I’ve had my donor registration sitting on my desk for the last few years, and I’ve been deliberating on it because I don’t trust capitalism not to create perverse incentives and do fucked up shit just like this.
That, and I don’t want my remains to just be a tool to help fund some CEO’s yacht.
Reading this, I feel even more justified in my concern, and it definitely could affect my ultimate decision.
If you’ve had it for years sitting there you where never going to sign it.
Not only that but the reduction in organ supply will be a windfall for shareholders! I see this as an absolute win! USA, USA!
Oh common, there are plenty of murder attempts at you for profit!
Bro, I know how capitalism works.
i once posted a question on another forum a while ago about organ donation, what if we can decide which organs go to which persons, so it would mitigate some of these issues,
If you can decide where your organs go, wouldn’t you decide to keep them for yourself? Dude wasn’t brain dead they say…
This is a rash conclusion to jump to
What other conclusion is there?
That it would be horrible to deny people a chance at life because you read a shitty clickbait article
I have heard other anecdotes of doctors pushing families into cutting support so they can use the organs. Seems plausible to me
Yes this sort of bullshit is why lots of people die needlessly. Some lie that a friend of a friend supposedly “knew”. It’s conspiracy nonsense that would only ever make a shred of sense if the doctor pushing for it personally knew the recipient and also knew they were a match. Not saying it’s never happened but calling it dubious is too kind.
“I’m not dead yet!”
He says he’s not dead.
And he’s not medically qualified to give that kind if diagnosis /s
Patient: I’m not dead! Surgeon: I’m a surgeon and I say your dead, lay still and be quiet as I harvest your organs mr smith.
That’s terrifying, sounds like it’d happen in a FNAF book. Think it has actually.
Waking up, look at them removing your lungs “I’m not done using those”
Just capitalism things. I hate what they’ve done to this country.
Happens in capitalist china too
I mean, it’s almost like regardless of the economic, political, religious (etc.) framework they’re operating within bad people will do bad things to one another for personal gain or something.
Yup
But bad systems create the incentives. Chalking it up to “bad people doing bad things” is a shallow analysis that does nothing to address the underlying problem. If you replaced all the “bad people” with “good people” you would see the same problems re-emerge due to the perverse incentives created by the profit motive.
I don’t know why there are never any business school shooters (I mean obviously it’s because people who go to them are out to take as much for themselves as possible, but you know what I mean)
That’s actually a good point, even if a bit macabre. Luigi took out a health insurance ghoul. Business majors doom us all. I’m not the only one to draw that conclusion.
I dont see a way out of this mess without people dying so I dont let myself have a gun. But not everyone who thinks this way places the same shackles on themselves.
So why isnt that more common?
Are organs from people dead for overdose useful? I would guess they would be full of drugs or other damage.
My guess would be that some may not be viable because of certain drugs but that doesn’t mean all of them are. You probably wouldn’t want the liver of a heavy drinker but thier lungs are probably fine?
If it’s a question between a slightly cirrhosis liver or no liver at all? Wouldn’t it be better to get the alcoholic liver?
eBay at it again. Silly!
’90s eBay was wild
