“Yo, yo, yo, YO! That’s MY LIVER, MAN!

I don’t typically use MEDIA ASSASSIN to share the “Odd But True” stories that often filter through the news, like the one about this dog, or this one on over-devoted soccer fans. I also avoid the far-too-frequent crime whose stench is so outrageous we can barely believe our nostrils.

But this story is unbelieveable, for what’s in it, but even more for what’s not.

You’ve probably heard the news: Zach Dunlap, right, 21, of Frederick, OK, was declared brain dead in November after an ATV accident. His family had approved his organs being harvested, and were saying goodbye to him.

As family members were paying their last respects, he moved his foot and hand. He reacted to a pocketknife scraped across his foot and to pressure applied under a fingernail.

Forty-eight days later, they sent him home for further recovery.

Dunlap now has the pocketknife that was scraped across his foot, causing the first reaction.

“Just makes me thankful, makes me thankful that they didn’t give up,” he said. “Only the good die young, so I didn’t go.”

When I read the piece, what most bowled me over is that a guy who’d been declared brain-dead, but was actually alive, came this close to having to having all of his internal organs yanked clear out of him and his remains dumped. While he was alive.

The only thing that saved him was slight movement, and a pocketknife scrape.

But in the piece, there’s no outrage from his parents, no question as to how often a brain-dead person, in the care of a hospital gets, eeuw, harvested while actually still alive.

In the piece, it notes that

Dunlap, 21, of Frederick, Oklahoma, said he has no recollection of the crash.

“I remember a little bit that was about an hour before the accident happened. But then about six hours before that, I remember,” he said.

Dunlap said one thing he does remember is hearing the doctors pronounce him dead.

“I’m glad I couldn’t get up and do what I wanted to do,” he said.

Asked if he would have wanted to get up and shake them and say he’s alive, Dunlap responded: “Probably would have been a broken window that went out.”

Can you imagine? This guy says he could hear the doctors over him, but was frozen, unable to respond. When they started harvesting his organs, would he have heard and felt that, too? Or, suppose they had taken his eyes, first, and then he’d woken up?

Is this bizarre, or is it just me? Why doesn’t the piece ask these questions? Dunlap was in care at United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, TX when all this happened. Besides adding a new twist to the saying “Don’t mess with Texas,” shouldn’t someone be getting heavily sued for coming this close to disemboweling him?