DOTHAN, Ala. - James Barnes died just after 9:30 a.m. Monday, April 13. Family members said doctors told them he had passed. They started making funeral arrangements. Friends were contacted and began pouring in to Flowers Hospital. Organ harvest personnel were contacted to come take his corneas.
The family re-entered the room later to spend last moments before they began to prepare his body for the cornea harvest.
That's when he woke up.
"I can't put my mind around this," Barnes said April 24, 11 days after his heart stopped beating. "It's more than this little mind can grasp."
Barnes has cancer. Three tumors are located in and around the heart. He had been undergoing aggressive chemotherapy treatments when he started feeling ill last Monday morning.
He phoned his wife, Laura, and asked her to return home to take him to the emergency room.