Patient Wakes Up In NY Hospital With Doctors Trying To Harvest Her Organs
 

Patient Wakes Up Right Before Doctors Remove Organs - ABC News

It was exactly midnight when Colleen Burns eerily opened her eyes and looked at the operating lights above her, shocking doctors who believed she was dead and were about to remove her organs and donate them to patients on the transplant waiting list.

The Syracuse Post-Standard unearthed a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that chronicled the series of errors that led to the near-organ removal on a living patient at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, N.Y., in 2009.

"The patient did not suffer a cardiopulmonary arrest (as documented) and did not have irreversible brain damage," the HHS report concluded. "The patient did not meet criteria for withdrawal of care."

Patient Wakes Up Right Before Doctors Remove Organs - ABC News

How do you wake up at that kind of moment having been misdiagnosed so egregiously and about to be 'harvested' and then not sue?

Although Burns opened her eyes at the last minute, saving herself from the organ harvest procedure, she committed suicide in 2011 at age 41. The family never sued, and family members told the Syracuse Post-Standard that Burns was too depressed to be upset about what happened to her at St. Joseph's.

Christ what a depressing story.