The family of a man who woke up as surgeons prepared to remove his organs have revealed tragic new details about a case that shocked the United States.
In 2021, Thomas ‘TJ’ Hoover II, now 36, was declared brain dead after an overdose sent him to Baptist Health hospital in Richmond, Kentucky.
Donna Rohrer, her sister and primary caregiver, has revealed that she began taking drugs due to the anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder she developed in response to seeing dead bodies after Hurricane Katrina and Rita.
Hoover had also previously lost two brothers to overdoses and was struggling to hold down a job and find a sense of purpose. Just a few months before he ended up in the hospital, his mother passed away.
On his late mother’s birthday, Hoover took unspecified drugs and passed out while loading his car. When paramedics arrived to treat him, he had no pulse.
Days later, after doctors found no signs of brain activity, Hoover’s family made the decision to remove him from life support and allow his organs to be harvested for donation, according to his wishes.
But as he was being taken to the operating room, Hoover woke up, and since then his story has spread across the country and appears to have sparked a wave of people removing their names from organ donor databases.
During a one-week period after reports on the Hoover story were published, approximately 170 people were being removed from organ donor registries per day.
Thomas ‘TJ’ Hoover II was rushed to the hospital after a drug overdose. His sister, Donna Rhorer, shared that Hoover got into narcotics after dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression.
This is 10 times the number of people who self-deleted during the same period in 2023.
Representatives of Gift of Life Michigan, a statewide organ donation network, told the Associated Press that some of the people whose name was removed specifically mentioned Hoover’s case.
This adds more stress to what is already a stressed system: where an estimated 17 people in the United States die each day waiting for an organ transplant.
Since 2021, Rhorer and the hospital’s whistleblowers have uncovered what happened that day.
They claim doctors told family members that scans showed no activity in Hoover’s brain and asked them if they wanted to honor their wishes to become an organ donor.
The family agreed to take him off life support and send him for organ donation once he died.
From there, officials from Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA) stepped in to coordinate the transplant.
Natasha Miller, who worked for KODA at the time and in the room during Hoover’s near-surgery. he told CNN that shortly after being wheeled into the transplant room, Hoover began to become agitated, even as his body was shaved and a surgical sheet was wrapped around him.
Thomas ‘TJ’ Hoover II, 36, had been declared brain dead when surgeons went to remove his organs at Baptist Health Richmond Hospital in Kentucky in October 2021. He came to when doctors were preparing his body for surgery. surgery.
She said she saw tears streaming down his face and, in a shocking new report, she said she saw him shake his head.
Miller said, “No one felt comfortable doing the case from the hospital.”
Miller then said coordinators called KODA managers to tell them the case needed to be closed.
Miller alleged that the organization’s top brass pressured Baptist Health’s in-person staff to proceed with the surgery.
Rhorer and the rest of Hoover’s family didn’t find out what happened in the operating room until Nycki Martin, a KODA surgical conservationist at the time, reached out after seeing Rhorer post about the “miracle” on TikTok.
Martin shared details with Rhorer about what happened on the operating table and the doubt the medical staff had expressed in preparing Hoover for surgery.
Rhorer said that if she and her family had known there were questions about his consciousness, “we would never have sent him to have his organs removed.”
In response to Martin’s comments, Miller and Rhorer, representatives of Network for Hope, the organization that has absorbed KODA since the 2021 incident, denied the incident.
Donna Rhorer, his sister, has become his legal guardian. Rhorer said doctors initially advised him to take Hoover to a nursing home, but he decided to take his brother home to help him regain his strength.
Its president and chief operating officer, Julie Bergen, told NPR: ‘No one at KODA has ever been pressured to harvest organs from any living patient.
‘KODA does not recover organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured its team members to do so.”
Baptist Health Richmond hospital has also insisted that ‘the safety of our patients is always our top priority.’
“We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure that our patients’ wishes regarding organ donation are met,” a hospital spokesperson told NPR.
The claims against KODA and the hospital are being reviewed by the Health Resources and Services Administration, the national agency that regulates transplants.
As the consequences of that October day continue to unfold, Hoover moves on with his life.
Rhorer took his brother home to live and helped him gather the strength to enter physical therapy.
Despite his doctors’ grim prognoses, Hover was well enough to be able to walk Rhorer down the aisle in May 2023.
He still has difficulty with balance, speaking, seeing, and some limitations in his short-term memory. Rohrer told FOX56 who loved going to the woods, camping and deer watching, hiking and “everything related to the outdoors,” so limited mobility is a challenge.
Still, she is grateful. He told CNN that he wants people to know that organ donation is “a beautiful thing,” adding, “What can you give someone more precious than love?” But at the same time it should not be abused.’