Man nearly had organs harvested before doctors realised he was still alive

He had been declared brain dead before they realised

“He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” Natasha Miller, an organ preservationist who was present during the incident, told NPR.

“And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.”

Miller explained that the two doctors refused to undergo the organ retrieval after realising what was going on.

“The procuring surgeon, he was like, ‘I’m out of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it,’ ” Miller said.

“It was very chaotic. Everyone was just very upset.”

The patient, 36-year-old Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, had been admitted after suffering a drug overdose, his sister Donna Rhorer explained.

The family had been told he lacked brain activity or any reflexes, so they made the heartbreaking decision to take him off life support.

Rhorer recalled that the staff at Baptist Health Hospital in Richmond said her brother had opted to be an organ donor, and so the hospital tested which of his organs would be viable.

She says she remembers feeling concerned for her brother as he was moved from the ICU to an operating room and saw his eyes flicker.

“We were told it was just reflexes – just a normal thing,” she told WKYT.

“Who are we to question the medical system?”

Inside the operating room, Miller said she called her supervisor when they clocked 'signs of life,' but was told to "find another doctor to do it."

An hour later, Rhorer was informed that her brother “wasn’t ready” for organ retrieval.

“He made several attempts to say, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ But it was kind of ignored. They finally stopped the procedure because he was showing too many signs of life,” she explained.

It was reported that Rhorer only found out her brother's full ordeal in January, when an employee of Baptist and the Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA) sent her and a congressional committee a letter.

KODA has maintained that the allegations are not accurate.

“No one at KODA has ever been pressured to collect organs from any living patient," they said in a statement.

Baptist Health Richmond Hospital also said that patient safety is their "highest priority".

"We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure our patients’ wishes for organ donation are followed," they said in a statement to The Independent.

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