OT - Embalmers find man alive and kicking in body bag
Workers at a Mississippi funeral home found an elderly man alive and kicking in a zipped-up body bag as they were preparing to embalm him, the Clarion-Ledger reports.
Walter Williams, a 78-year-old farmer who had been pronounced dead at his home Wednesday night by a coroner, woke up inside the bag at the Porter and Sons Funeral Home in Lexington, Miss., about five hours later.
"I asked the coroner what happened, and the only thing he could say is that it's a miracle," Holmes County Sheriff Willie March said...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/02/28/bodybag-coroner-mississippi-funeral-home/5896561/
February 28th, 2014 at 2:46 PM ^
will be if that coroner still has a job tomorrow.
February 28th, 2014 at 2:49 PM ^
Holmes County, Mississippi has the worst life expectancy of any county in the United State. You're not exactly dealing with the varsity squad when it comes to medical professionals down there.
February 28th, 2014 at 2:56 PM ^
That the common denominator goes beyond just the quality of medical professionals.
February 28th, 2014 at 4:24 PM ^
He died on 1/1/14 at his home with family around him. When we called Hospice they came in and started paper work, they called the cornor and all he did was ask the nurse if he was dead. No one took a pulse or confirmed he was dead. I asked her that question when the funeral home came to take him.. she said oh yeah, I am sorry I need to do that. So yeah I can totally see this happening.
February 28th, 2014 at 5:14 PM ^
I'm adding a line at the top of my will....
"Step 1. Did anyone check for a pulse or are you just going with your gut on this?"
February 28th, 2014 at 3:08 PM ^
If they're just declaring live people dead like this, no wonder the life expectancy numbers are low.
February 28th, 2014 at 2:47 PM ^
ability to start fast in there, too by any chance?
February 28th, 2014 at 2:48 PM ^
That's just a step or two below my worst fear of waking up in a casket underground.
Just scary.
February 28th, 2014 at 3:35 PM ^
Don't worry, if you are not actually dead yet, the embalming fluid that the funeral home will pump into your veins before burial will likely do it.
February 28th, 2014 at 3:38 PM ^
Even if you weren't before, you're sure to be dead once the embalmers are finished with you. Replacing all your blood with formaldehyde tends to be fatal.
Feel better now?
February 28th, 2014 at 5:18 PM ^
I'm beginning to replace my blood with Bell's Two-hearted right now!
(Apologies to usurping the Friday Night Drinking Thread)
February 28th, 2014 at 5:33 PM ^
for two reasons: No chance of your fear happening and I like warmth.
February 28th, 2014 at 2:50 PM ^
That is one sound sleeper.
February 28th, 2014 at 2:56 PM ^
Well I know what my next nightmare is going to be about
February 28th, 2014 at 2:57 PM ^
February 28th, 2014 at 6:11 PM ^
Must have been a Spartan troll.
February 28th, 2014 at 3:07 PM ^
"I wondered why you just stopped taliking."
There you go.
February 28th, 2014 at 3:12 PM ^
Oh that John C. Reilly and Wil Ferrell. Such pranksters.
February 28th, 2014 at 3:26 PM ^
Look who knows so much. Turns out your farmer friend is only MOSTLY dead.
Turns out he's a Mississippi State booster and wanted to make sure that young recruits got his loose change.
February 28th, 2014 at 3:29 PM ^
February 28th, 2014 at 3:45 PM ^
That was a not-uncommon practice. Several devices for warning of people buried alive were patented in England and the US. These were known as 'safety coffins'. Some believe it's also the source of the expression "saved by the bell," but there's no real evidence for that. The expression most likely came from boxing.
February 28th, 2014 at 4:53 PM ^
February 28th, 2014 at 6:14 PM ^
Ha-ha-ha! One of my favorite movies of all time.
February 28th, 2014 at 7:06 PM ^
I was going to post the clip of this. Good play, sir.
February 28th, 2014 at 9:42 PM ^
they stun easily, you know.
...or maybe the "non-dead" man was pining for the fields.
February 28th, 2014 at 4:00 PM ^
Boss: Why did no call/no show these past couple days?
Worker: Turns out I was pronounced dead and then............
February 28th, 2014 at 4:09 PM ^
Lucky he didn't want to be cremated.
February 28th, 2014 at 4:14 PM ^
....why you might want to think twice before signing off on any organ donation. The poor guy might have woken to see them cutting out his insides. When the criteria is "brain death" then it's a pretty fine line between being alive & dead. If there is some greedy doctors hot for your insides then where's the motivation for anyone to keep you alive? Even worse if you got a large life insurance payout and a wife that hates your guts.
February 28th, 2014 at 4:26 PM ^
February 28th, 2014 at 4:29 PM ^
February 28th, 2014 at 4:39 PM ^
February 28th, 2014 at 7:59 PM ^
February 28th, 2014 at 5:27 PM ^
The Glasgow Coma Scale is calibrated in ounces of single-malt Scotch, from what I hear.
Apologies that it took so long to finally respond to your comment; I saw it this morning and am only now giving it the attention it deserves.
As was already articluated by another reader, you sir are an ignorant ass-hat. As a former member of a transplant team, I can honestly say that many people in the general population opt not to donate their organs due to misinformation and fear-mongering generated by uninformed Luddites like yourself. Less donors mean less organs, and less organs means fewer lives saved. On behalf of modern medicine and those desperately waiting for life-saving transplants, please crawl out from under the rock where you reside and get a clue.
1) Multiple studies are conducted to establish clinical brain death over a period of time. It's not a "snap-judgement" and would have to be incorrectly diagnosed multiple times over that period.
2) Brain death is irreversible. This is NOT a coma. It is impossible to awaken from brain death. Saying it's a "fine line between being alive and death" is like suggesting that a broken television isn't actually broken so long as you leave it plugged into the wall.
3) Coroners do NOT pronounce brain death. Licensed physicians board-certified in neurology do.
4) The medical team working to save the paitent's life has no association to the transplant team, and thus no financial nor other incentive to get "greedy" and "hot for your insides." The regional transplant organization is only contacted after brain death has been established.
I really hate to be that guy on the internet who has to log on just to say that you are wrong, but your comments go beyond unenlightened and ignorant when they perpetuate myths and stereotypes that have real life-or-death consequences. Here's a new strategy that might serve you well in life:
Think first. Open pie-hole second.
February 28th, 2014 at 4:41 PM ^
Three old men were talking about their funeral services and wondering what people would say about them as they passed the casket.
One man said, "I hope they will say what a great father and grandfather he was. His every wish his family wanted, he gave them. What a great man."
The second man said, "I hope they will talk about my community service - my perfect attendance at our Rotary Club, my effort to keep parks available for everyone."
The third man hoped they'd say something different: "Look! He's moving!"
February 28th, 2014 at 5:25 PM ^
There are...men alive in here"
February 28th, 2014 at 5:32 PM ^
He was just playing dead to get out of doing the dishes.
February 28th, 2014 at 6:20 PM ^
"He said, 'Gracie, don't get upset. We're fixing to take your daddy to the hospital,'" she said. "I said, 'What?' And he told me, 'He's back moving.'"
This has to be the one type of call that you would never expect from a funeral home, the one that goes, "As it turns out, we had to turn your father away because he is in fact alive...". Glad that the family gets to enjoy their father for a bit longer though. The article from the paper in Mississippi did not have any insight into what precisely the medical issue was though - I was curious about that.
February 28th, 2014 at 10:49 PM ^
February 28th, 2014 at 7:23 PM ^
people wouldn't be so anxious to see him off this mortal coil.
February 28th, 2014 at 8:17 PM ^
I thought stuff liked this only happens on TV.
February 28th, 2014 at 10:07 PM ^
I was thinking of being cremated. Does that mean I could wake up in an oven?
Given the extreme over-saturation of zombies in pop culture, I'm shocked that they didn't knife his head through the body bag once they saw it kicking and moving.