Paralyzed Swedish Stroke Patient Heard Doctors Discussing Donating his Organs, But Couldn’t Warn Them He Was Still Alive

A paralyzed Swedish patient, who had suffered a stroke, could hear doctors discussing the removal of his organs but couldn’t move to warn them he was still alive, despite being fully conscious.

Jim Fritze has now filed an official complaint to the Gothenburg hospital responsible, while he has also been recalling the horrific moment when he heard officials telling his girlfriend that he would almost certainly die, before then discussing potential liver and kidney transplants.

The 43-year-old told the Daily Telegraph, “I heard them tell my girlfriend and my relatives that there was no hope. I couldn’t do anything. I could only see and hear. I couldn’t move my body.”

Fritze, who worked as a supermarket manager, suffered the stroke two years earlier. However, because he was on an island and conditions were too windy for a helicopter to arrive, it took over an hour and a half for a boat to transport him to hospital, which resulted in him being completely paralysed.

“They looked at an x-ray of my brain, and when they had done that, they told my girlfriend that it wasn’t good and that I wouldn’t live,” he continued. “I could hear her crying the whole time, but I couldn’t do anything.”

Fritze was drafting in and out of consciousness for 24 months, and woke to hear his doctors making the horrible prognosis.

“I hear them talking about donation, they wanted to do some tests on my liver and my kidney, so they could give them to some people,” he explained. However, there was nothing that he could do about it, because he wasn’t able to move his body to alert the doctors that he was conscious.

As you can imagine, Fritze was a tad perturbed by what he was hearing. “I was scared because I thought that I was going to die then, and a hard death,” he recalled. “I remember I though, what will happen if they cremate me, will I see the fire and feel the fire?”

Fritze, who obviously survived because he has now been able to recall his almost tragic ordeal, revealed that he only survived because an experienced doctor returned from holiday three days early.

This doctor took a look at the x-ray who soon realised that Mr Fritze would probably recover, and then, just a few days later, he was proved correct when his patient nodded his head. Fritze has now undergone two years worth of rehabilitation, but still relies on an assistant and is confined to a wheelchair. But it could have been so much worse.

[Image via sfam_photo/Shutterstock]