Hello everyone and welcome back to Scary Interesting.

In this video, we're going to look at three stories of people who found themselves in absolutely horrific situations and came out of them alive,

but it didn't really make what happened to them any less horrific.

In fact, I found one of these stories to be so disturbing that it inspired an entire video that's coming out later this month.

You'll see what I mean, and as always, viewer discretion is strongly advised.

About 100,000 Americans are currently waiting for organ transplants, but with nearly 170 million

registered donors,

you'd think the odds of getting a life-saving heart, liver, kidney would be relatively good.

But that's just not the case, and as a result, approximately 17 Americans waiting for organs

die every day. Growing up in central Kentucky, Anthony or T.J. Hoover lost two brothers two drug addiction.

The deaths had such a profound impact on his life that he dropped out of his high school and joined the Job Corps at the age of 16. T.J. and his older sister Donna hoped the Job Corps would give him a sense of purpose and get his life back on track, but in many respects, his timing couldn't have been any worse. At the time, he was already experiencing bouts of depression and anxiety because he was never able to come to terms with his brother's deaths.

Then in the summer of 2005, T.J. was sent to help with the cleanup efforts after Hurricanes

Katrina and Rita, and shortly after arriving, he witnessed death and devastation unlike

anything most of us can possibly imagine.

His depression and anxiety then got even worse, and when it was all said and done, he developed a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Doctors then prescribed him a powerful medication to help him deal with what he saw, but the medication to help him apparently made him feel like such a zombie that he couldn't hold down a job or live a remotely normal life. So he eventually turned to drugs just like his brothers had years before, and he used drugs on and off over the next decade and a half, but even still, he got on with his life about as well as could be expected. At least he did until his mother passed away in mid-2020. Monday, October 25th, 2021 would have been her birthday, and that afternoon his sister Donna found him lying face down on the pavement shortly after told her he was going outside to put a few things in the car. She immediately knew he had overdosed and he had no pulse and wasn't breathing when EMTs arrived shortly thereafter. They then rushed him to a hospital and when they arrived T.J. was in cardiac arrests. Tragically, Donna and a number of other family members got to the hospital just as doctors were placed in T.J. on life support. The following morning, a doctor told them he had no brain activity or reflexes

and that without life support he'd probably die. So after careful consideration, the family agreed

to change his status to do not resuscitate. The family then got an unexpected visit from representatives

from the Kentucky organ donor affiliates,

otherwise known as CODA. They then informed T.J.'s family that he was a registered organ donor

and that if everything went according to plan, his organs might save a life or two. Considering how

tragic and heartbreaking the situation was, they took some comfort in knowing that he might not have

died in vain. Surgeons and support staff then spent the next few days

...