Three years ago, Anthony Hoover woke up in a Kentucky hospital to find people shaving his chest, bathing his body in surgical solution and talking about harvesting his organs. <\/p>\n
TJ was also registered as an organ donor. He was young and relatively healthy. His family heard from an organization then called Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, or KODA, <\/em>about all the lives he could save as his was ending. They agreed that they should do as he wished and allow his organs to go to people in need. <\/p>\n On October 29, 2021, TJ was wheeled to the OR for the five-hour procedure. Less than two hours later, a staff member came to talk with his family. <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not ready,\u201d they said. \u201cHe woke up.\u201d <\/p>\n TJ\u2019s family thought it was a miracle. <\/p>\n But former employees of the organ procurement organization working on TJ\u2019s case say it was a breach of trust \u2013 one called it a \u201cdisaster\u201d \u2014 that a man who was making eye contact, shaking his head \u201cno\u201d and thrashing on the table should never have been in the operating room, that a man who left the hospital to live with family weeks later shouldn\u2019t have been at risk of losing his life. <\/p>\n The hospital said in a statement that \u201cthe safety of our patients is always our highest priority. We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure our patients\u2019 wishes for organ donation are followed.\u201d <\/p>\n KODA, now known as Network for Hope since a merger with another organ procurement network, said it has reviewed the case and \u201cremains confident that accepted practices and approved protocols were followed.\u201d It also says the case has been \u201cinaccurately represented,\u201d including by \u201cindividuals never involved with this case.\u201d <\/p>\n But disturbing details about TJ\u2019s case \u2014 including allegations of pressure to harvest his organs despite signs that he was aware and resisting \u2014 recently prompted Kentucky\u2019s attorney general to investigate whether criminal charges are warranted in this case. At the federal level, the Health Resources and Services Administration, through the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, is investigating, as well. A bipartisan congressional Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee that heard about the case this fall has also been looking into the incident. <\/p>\n And critics of the country\u2019s organ procurement system say TJ\u2019s story is not unique. Without major reform and oversight, they worry that it could happen again and that not all patients will be lucky enough to survive. <\/p>\n By October 2021, TJ Hoover had struggled with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, his sister said. He had dropped out of high school years earlier, after he lost two brothers to drug addiction. At 16, he joined the Job Corps in search of a sense of purpose, but he could never shake memories of the dead bodies that he said he saw when he was sent to clean up after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Prescribed medications left him feeling like a zombie, she said, and made it difficult to work. Eventually, he turned to illicit drugs to help cope. <\/p>\n \u201cKnowing what drugs did to his brothers, he would try to quit and was occasionally successful,\u201d Rhorer said. <\/p>\n But not on the night of October 25, 2021. His mother had died months before, and that would have been her birthday. TJ went outside to load his car and was later found face-down on the pavement. He had overdosed. <\/p>\n When EMTs arrived, TJ had no pulse and wasn\u2019t breathing. They performed CPR, shocked his heart and rushed him to nearby Baptist Health. <\/p>\n A scan in the emergency room revealed that TJ had brain damage, but doctors couldn\u2019t say how serious it was because of swelling. TJ was transferred to the ICU. <\/p>\n \u201cI felt like the doctor was doing everything he could,\u201d said Rhorer, 48. She snapped photos and videos of her baby brother and eventually posted some on TikTok, hoping to show what a drug overdose could do to someone and deter others from the same fate. <\/p>\n At that point, hospital staff talked to the family about changing TJ\u2019s status to Do Not Resuscitate, which would keep him from receiving CPR if his heart stopped beating or if he stopped breathing. With little change two days after the overdose, TJ\u2019s family allowed it. <\/p>\n Rhorer said they expected health-care workers to come to remove life support, but instead, representatives from KODA arrived. <\/p>\n TJ\u2019s name was on the organ donor registry, they told Rhorer. His organs could save multiple lives if his family would honor his wishes. <\/p>\n \u201cOf course, if that were his wishes,\u201d she told them. <\/p>\n About 170 million people in the US are signed up to donate organs when they die, but less than 1% of those who register can actually donate. Consequently, about 17 people in the United States die every day waiting for a transplant. <\/p>\n \u201cIf I lost my brother and eight people could live, then I felt like my brother wouldn\u2019t die in vain,\u201d Rhorer said later. <\/p>\n The medical records Rhorer has for TJ say he was \u201cdeclared brain-dead patient being maintained for harvesting of organs\u201d on October 29. TJ underwent procedures to make sure his organs were fit for donation, and that afternoon, hospital workers came to the family and told them it was time. <\/p>\n They held what\u2019s known as an honor walk, a tradition in many hospitals when someone donates organs. A video shot by Rhorer\u2019s friend and posted on TikTok shows TJ in a bed being rolled down a corridor. Hospital staff stop what they are doing, line the halls and stand in silence in their blue scrubs and white coats. Some hold tissues and dab at their eyes. <\/p>\n The walk pauses so TJ\u2019s family can see him one more time. A man in a camo hat and flannel bends to kiss his forehead, and others lean forward to tell TJ they love him. <\/p>\n Although it\u2019s hard to see TJ, a person in scrubs says reassuringly, \u201csometimes they do respond, with some reflexes,\u201d and then asks them to stop filming out of respect for patient privacy. Notes from the case say that TJ\u2019s eyes were open all the way down to the OR. <\/p>\n Everyone thought this was goodbye until a couple hours later, when they heard that TJ was awake. <\/p>\n After Nycki Martin put her five kids to bed, she usually studied for med school acceptance tests; she wants to be a surgeon. But one night in January 2024, she was winding down with TikTok instead. She had worked in organ procurement and was swiping through videos, looking for organ donor stories. <\/p>\n Organ donation, Martin said, is \u201csuch a beautiful mission and saved so many lives when it\u2019s done right.\u201d <\/p>\n She discovered a video of TJ\u2019s honor walk. Over the video, the text said, \u201cTJ Honor Walk But God!!\u201d with a prayer emoji. The comments explained what \u201cbut God\u201d meant: The patient had woken up. <\/p>\n \u201cI was like \u2018That sounds familiar; it must have happened to someone else,\u2019 \u201d Martin said. It reminded her of a case she was aware of through her previous work at KODA. <\/p>\n Looking closer, she recognized people in the video and realized it was the same case. <\/p>\n \u201cThe family trusted everyone involved,\u201d she said. \u201cI just feel like there were so many opportunities for someone to step in and say, we\u2019re not doing the right thing.\u201d <\/p>\n She decided to message TJ\u2019s sister. <\/p>\n Martin, who worked as a surgical preservationist for KODA for about a year, was not in the room when TJ was being prepped for surgery, but she had been heading to Richmond as staff relief. She said she got constant updates from people who were there, and they were upset that that patient was awake. <\/p>\n In those treatment records, an eyewitness account of a heart catheterization \u2013 ordered by KODA and performed at Baptist Health several hours before TJ\u2019s organs were expected to be harvested \u2013 noted that TJ had \u201cpurposeful movement to pain\u201d during the heart procedure. His eyes were \u201copen and tracking,\u201d and he was \u201cthrashing around.\u201d <\/p>\n According to the record, the cardiologist commented, \u201cI am no neurologist, but if I would most certainly call this purposeful movement, and they should not have said that patient was not going to have a meaningful recovery with these reflexes.\u201d <\/p>\n Instead of stopping the procedure, the cardiologist gave TJ a paralytic called rocuronium and sedated him further with midazolam and fentanyl so the test could be completed. <\/p>\n The record added that hospital staffers were \u201cextremely uncomfortable with the amount of reflexes\u201d and that some complained that \u201cthis was euthanasia.\u201d <\/p>\n According to the record, the representative for KODA explained that \u201cit was the families [sic] decision to terminally extubate the patient prior to KODA approaching for donation and this is another opportunity to donate still.\u201d <\/p>\n Rhorer has hundreds of pages of TJ\u2019s records printed from the hospital medical records department, and she keeps them in a binder that\u2019s always close by. But she did not have this record, and she said they were never told what happened during the catheterization. <\/p>\n Rhorer learned more details after Martin got in touch with her. Martin also got in touch with a patient advocacy organization called Organize to tell them about TJ\u2019s case, and she wrote a letter to Congress describing what happened. <\/p>\n Rhorer\u2019s attorneys have requested all of TJ\u2019s records from the hospital and from the organ procurement organization but said they have not received the ones from KODA. <\/p>\n When activists first read the catheterization record to Rohrer over the phone in September 2024, she sat at her kitchen table and cried. Had she fully understood that TJ wasn\u2019t brain-dead and that he had woken up during the heart catheterization, she said, the family would have made a different choice. <\/p>\n \u201cWe would never have sent him for his organs to be harvested,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n There are circumstances in which a patient who isn\u2019t brain-dead may still become an organ donor. It\u2019s called donation after circulatory death, or DCD, and it has become much more common in recent years, although some experts question the ethics of the practice. <\/p>\n \u201cThe way DCD is supposed to work is, you\u2019ve got somebody with essentially devastating illness or injury, and their families decided to withdraw life support,\u201d explained Dr. Robert Cannon, an associate professor of surgery and surgical director of the liver transplant program at the University at Alabama Birmingham. Cannon did not work on TJ\u2019s case but was familiar with it because he testified about lapses in the organ procurement system at the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing where TJ\u2019s case came to light. <\/p>\n \u201cCertainly, we have potential DCD donors with lots of reflexes,\u201d Cannon said. \u201cBut as long as the family knows this is what\u2019s happening with their loved one, this process is considered ethical and standard.\u201d <\/p>\n What isn\u2019t ethical, he said, is undue pressure to continue. He has been in an operating room where a patient exhibited reflexes that suggested they were not brain-dead, but he says the organ procurement agency encouraged him to harvest the organs anyway. In that case, the procedure was stopped. <\/p>\n One person who was in the operating room for TJ\u2019s case felt that it went too far. <\/p>\n Natasha Miller was an organ perfusionist – the person who packages the organs after they\u2019ve been removed – with KODA at the time of TJ\u2019s case, although she no longer works for the organization. An hour ahead of TJ\u2019s procedure, she was in the OR at Baptist Health to prep equipment and brief hospital staff on what to expect, especially with a DCD case, in which patients may open their eyes or move. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is very shocking for people who have never experienced it before,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n As Miller headed to the hospital the day of TJ\u2019s procedure, she got texts that questioned why the organ procurement was happening, since TJ seemed aware and resisting. <\/p>\n \u201cNo one was comfortable doing the case from the hospital,\u201d she said. But KODA was \u201cpushing, pushing, pushing to go.\u201d <\/p>\n Miller and a trainee arrived at the hospital, where she said hospital staff was \u201cvery agitated.\u201d She warned her trainee that \u201cnot everyone is pro-KODA.\u201d <\/p>\n When Miller, an award-winning body builder and an unflappable former Marine, saw TJ for the first time, she could understand the concern. He thrashed around the entire time, and hospital staff was telling him to calm down. <\/p>\n \u201cThis was no ordinary movement,\u201d Miller said. \u201cHe was very aware.\u201d <\/p>\n Despite TJ\u2019s agitation, the process continued. He was draped and shaved. <\/p>\n Miller said she noticed tears rolling down his face. He kept shaking his head as if to say no. <\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t even imagine, probably, the fear he felt,\u201d Miller said. <\/p>\n In typical DCD cases, family and a doctor who is not from the organ procurement team are there for the patient\u2019s final moments. The doctor removes the life-sustaining equipment and waits. Sometimes, it can take more than an hour for a patient to die. Once it\u2019s clear that their heart is no longer beating, the family leaves. <\/p>\n The doctor waits another five minutes and listens to the heart and lungs, and only then does that doctor pronounce the patient dead. <\/em>That\u2019s when the procurement team gets to work. <\/p>\n In TJ\u2019s case, it never got that far. <\/p>\n \u201cThe pronouncing physician, she comes in, takes one look at him and says, \u2018No, I\u2019m not doing this. He has way too much function,\u2019\u201d Miller said. The record activists say is from KODA said that the doctor felt this was \u201cinhumane\u201d and \u201cunethical.\u201d <\/p>\n The coordinator from KODA told the doctor she\u2019d been trying to get the case shut down all day, Miller said. <\/p>\n Miller added that the KODA coordinator called her manager, who yelled and pushed to get another doctor to pronounce TJ dead. The coordinator was in tears, Miller said, and the doctor who was supposed to do the organ procurement was upset and left. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was just a disaster,\u201d Miller said. <\/p>\n The procedure was stopped. <\/p>\n Miller said that as soon as the staff told TJ they\u2019d take him back to the ICU, he calmed down. <\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s how we know he was very aware,\u201d Miller said. <\/p>\n TJ spent the next few weeks at the hospital. Employees there suggested sending him to an out-of-state nursing home, but Rhorer took him to her home in Richmond instead. <\/p>\n Rhorer spent so much time caring for TJ, she lost her job as a restaurant manager. Instead, she made it her job to heal her brother. <\/p>\n Rhorer helped build TJ\u2019s strength so much that he became fit for therapy, and he was able to walk his sister down the aisle at her wedding in May 2023. <\/p>\n TJ has challenges, including limited short-term memory, vision issues and balance problems. But he\u2019s strong enough for physical therapy several times a week, and he still has a sense of humor. Admire his tattoos, and he\u2019ll show two fists: Across his right knuckles, it says \u201cY\u2019all,\u201d and across his left, it says \u201csuck.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re blessed, because he\u2019s not supposed to be here,\u201d Rhorer said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t supposed to make it a year, and he made it, and we\u2019re three years in, and he\u2019s thriving.\u201d <\/p>\n When Rhorer talks to TJ about what happened at the hospital, he sometimes asks why people were trying to kill him. Other times, he expresses guilt that his organs didn\u2019t save others. <\/p>\n \u201cHe has survivor\u2019s guilt,\u201d Rhorer said. <\/p>\n She believes that the family was misinformed about TJ\u2019s condition and that people were dismissive of her brother. His humanity got lost, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s an overdose,\u201d Rhorer said. \u201cI think they saw organs where we saw a family member. <\/p>\n \u201cTo them, it was just their day job.\u201d <\/p>\n She keeps dozens of painful images of TJ\u2019s hospitalization in an album. She still posts videos on TikTok, knowing that her posts from 2021 helped piece together her brother\u2019s story. <\/p>\n \u201cI had no idea what I was getting myself into,\u201d Rhorer said. Until she saw the TikTok message from Martin, she believed that her brother\u2019s survival was a miracle that came at just the right moment. And a part of her still thinks this is a miracle. <\/p>\n On her back porch, there\u2019s a bright blue chair with TJ\u2019s handwritten initials and dates: his birth date, the day his heart stopped beating and the day doctors stopped the procedure that would have ended his life. On the seat of the chair is a Bible verse, John 11:25-26: \u201cI am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet should live. And whomever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.\u201d <\/p>\n Now, her determination to help TJ extends beyond the physical. She is telling their story so what happened to her baby brother doesn\u2019t ever happen to anyone else. <\/p>\n \u201cOrgan donation is a beautiful thing,\u201d Rhorer said. \u201cWhat can you give somebody more precious than love? But at the same time, it shouldn\u2019t be abused.\u201d <\/p>\n Videos by Lacey Russell and Deborah Brunswick.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Three years ago, Anthony Hoover woke up in a Kentucky hospital to find people shaving his chest, bathing his body in surgical solution and talking about harvesting his organs. TJ was also registered as an organ donor. He was young and relatively healthy. His family heard from an organization then called Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":626,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Honoring TJ\u2019s wishes<\/h2>\n
A \u2018beautiful mission\u2019 when done right<\/h2>\n
\n
<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018Pushing, pushing, pushing\u2019 to harvest organs<\/h2>\n
Survivor\u2019s guilt<\/h2>\n