Posted on 11/21/2007 9:47:38 AM PST by Tulsa Ramjet
OKLAHOMA CITY -- What may have been a mistake at a Texas hospital is being called a miracle by the parents of a Frederick man who was critically injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident.
For more than six hours on Monday, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol classified Zack Dunlap as the state's 610th motor vehicle fatality of the year.
Troopers removed Dunlap's name from the list the same day after learning he showed signs of life shortly before his organs were to be harvested for transplant.
Dunlap was hurt about 7:30 p.m. on Saturday while riding his four-wheeler on a Tillman County road less than a mile west of Davidson with a friend. His vehicle hit the rear of Colton Gains' four-wheeler, causing Dunlap's ATV to spin 180 degrees and throwing him off, according to the patrol's report.
Dunlap, 21, was flown to United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, Texas, where he was placed on life support.
Doctors pronounced him dead at 11:10 a.m. Monday, said trooper Betsy Randolph, a patrol spokeswoman.
However, "He's alive," Randolph said after speaking with hospital officials late Monday.
As a worker was removing tubes from Dunlap's body in preparation for medical personnel to remove his organs, Dunlap reached out and touched a nurse's arm, Randolph said.
(Excerpt) Read more at tulsaworld.com ...
You are correct in that the brain is a difficult and unpredictable organ in terms of function post injury. I’m glad your family members were able to make a full functional recovery and hopefully you realize how rare those two family members are and He was looking over them.
And in every organization that I’ve worked in, the organ recovery team is a separate entity from the hospital, so as to avoid even the perception of impropriety. But apparently that doesn’t stop the “experts” here from spewing dishonest statements and believing them as truths.
I gotta check with my officer buddies! I’ll send an email right now, but they both are on night shift.
Organs are much more likely to be useful if the donor is not actually dead at the harvesting so there is a lot of fudging of what it means to be dead. A doctor gets a lot more career brownie points receiving your donation than he does saving your life.
Maybe its just because I’m sure in my own faith But I am going to die someday, and yes, absolutely to die because of the greed or just by an honest accident, it is a tragedy. But of all the ways to die, if it is in an act the saves the lives of 2, maybe several other innocent people, I would not begrudge my loss. My only regret would be that someone who was not innocent: not deserving, would get to benefit from my sacrifice, while someone actually deserving dies waiting on a list. If you drank your liver to death, clogged your heart by obesity inactivity and smoking, destroyed your kidneys through drug overdose in a failed suicide attempt, you don’t deserve another, I hope you’d never get mine, I’d rather it rot with me in the ground then get wasted by you, because you would never be grateful. if you were, you’d still have your own.
I’ve talked to a doctor working with transplant, and had to hear about 17 year olds killed in car crash, 3 days before his birthday, and his organ goes to an older man, (an alcoholic) who had the gall to complain to the doctor that it was so inconvenient for him, he was missing a [some social function] he was supposed to be at. Not a care that just down the hall is a kid who was supposed to be at his 18th birthday party tomorrow. Ungratefulness just burns me like nothing else.
I do wonder if any of you who value your life so much you won’t be a donor, with your mindset, would you really ever be willing to fight in a war to save other innocent lives when it means you might loose your own? I see no difference.
I think many people are like me; they are willing to give their organs, but only if they are sure they don’t need them any more. In some cases there is question about whether all due diligence is actually done. Just because a person is not willing to be labeled as a donor on their license does not mean they are against organ donation. Many choose to let their family make the choice of whether or not organs will be donated depending on the situation.
Welcome to FR.
I am totally with you.
What a steaming pantload of crap.
I am glad to hear that your niece and mother have fully recovered. You are right that the experts do not know much about the brain. If you want something to go wrong, hope for the heart. The experts know almost everything about the heart.
I don’t know the specifics of your cases, but I would caution you that brain death is far different from a coma, or a patient on life support. It is a medically verifiable condition, that must be met before a patient is even considered a candidate for donation. There are numerous other procedures that must occur as well.
By suggesting removal from life support, it would seem like they were not interested in organ donation. Once life support is removed, the organs are not usable.
Sometimes the hospitals mention it as a means to start the tissue typing process, just in case. But that certainly doesn’t mean they are ready to start removing organs. Medical professionals can be insensitive, which can be terrifying to the families of patients. But there are plenty of laws to prevent organs from being harvested from patients that are not really dead.
Let’s at least do a fake autopsy run first, just in case the person is trying to get out of work that day, or something:
Mortician: “Okay, I’m about to put the huge tube up the deceased anus...”
Deceased: “OKAY OKAY, back up...don’t embalm me, dude.”
What a load of crap.
“Organs are much more likely to be useful if the donor is not actually dead at the harvesting so there is a lot of fudging of what it means to be dead”
Organs are not useable if the patient’s is officially dead. Brain death is the criteria. You are making things up, and ER docs do not get anything for organ donations.
Organ donation saves thousands of lives. You are making things up to convince people that it is a bad thing, when in fact, you know nothing about it. People could die because of what you are saying. I suggest you reconsider your comments.
If it is there it is on the front, bottom about a half inch from the right side. It will be two lines below your hair color.
First, I’m glad that this person is on the road to recovery.
But understand the medicine is not a “perfect” science. Even with all the advances in monitoring equipment and tests, etc., as interpretations and judgments are still made by human beings, mistakes will happen. While the mistakes are reported in dramatic fashion by a media that just loves to be dramatic and exploitive, I tend to believe that they are the very rare exception rather than the rule.
Do some of you really think that most doctors are ghoulishly waiting in the shadows just waiting to rip the organs out of a still living human being? Given the potential for huge malpractice suits, I think this a very highly unlikely scenario.
Besides, most doctors I’ve known see the death of their patient as a personal defeat and they are much more apt to err on the side of life.
I’m confident that a whole lot more lives are saved by organ donation than the miniscule amount of mistakes made in the determination of brain death.
I’m a registered organ donor and I really don’t lay awake at night worrying that some ghoul with a scalpel is going to mistake my REM sleep for brain death.
I understand that is how it is supposed to work, and likely does in most cases- so what do you think happened in the case this article highlights?
Nothin’ there on mine. There’s some letters printed along the right margin that you can’t see without twistin’ the license around to get the light to hit it just right!
LOL there you go...great plan.
Do you have the words to that song?
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