Paralyzed Stroke Victim Listened Helplessly as Doctors Discussed Organ Donation (1344 hits)
(The London Daily Mail) Here is yet another cautionary tale for patients who are organ donors, where doctors may too quickly began cutting up patients who are not really dead to begin harvesting their organs for donations.
These kinds of cases have happened before, as supposedly “brain dead” patients have come back to life just before having their vital organs taken from them after prematurely being declared dead. Although there is nothing morally wrong with organ donations — in fact, it’s arguably a very pro-life action to take — these kinds of stories ought to remind organ donors (and any patient and their family) that doctors are too quickly declaring patients dead or too far gone to treat.
In this new case, Jimi Fritze, 43, could hear but not talk after suffering brain hemorrhage and family surrounded his hospital bed after doctors said he would not survive.
“I heard them tell my girlfriend and my relatives that there was no hope,” Jimi Fritze, 43, told The Daily Telegraph. “I couldn’t do anything. I could only see and hear. I couldn’t move my body.” He eventually pulled through and is now taking action against hospital.
The London Daily Mail has the story: A stroke patient lying paralysed in hospital listened in horror as doctors discussed organ donation with his family after telling them he would not survive. Jimi Fritze, 43, heard every word but couldn’t protest because he was unable to speak. Fritze suffered a brain haemorrhage while out with his family on the Gothenburg archipelago around two years ago.
‘I managed to catch my girlfriend’s attention – I was bright red in the face, and she’s a nurse so she managed to keep my airways open,’ Mr Fritze said. An air ambulance was unable to land on the island, so he had to wait nearly two hours to reach Sahlgrenska hospital by boat.Mr Fritze said: ‘Only my ears and eyes were working. They (the doctors) told my girlfriend that there was no hope’.But three days later another doctor who had returned from holiday gave more positive prognosis.Mr Fritze said: ‘She looked at my scans and said “This doesn’t look too bad” and told the staff to give me cortisone to bring down the swelling in my brain.
It took another three weeks before he could communicate his horror to his family and more than two years on he has only just recovered enough to take action against the hospital.
