BRAZILIAN MAN NOT DEAD, DOESN’T WANT TO GO ON THE CART

A man in Goiania, Brazil spent five hours awake and breathing in a body bag after paramedics mistakenly declared him dead. Jose Ribeiro da Silva, 62, had been declared dead on November 29 with officials listing the official cause as complications from mouth cancer. The hospital even handed his family a death certificate. One of the physicians, who had been treating Mr. da Silva, thought he was dead due to a lack of a respiration. However, he had actually been breathing during the entire five hour trip in the body bag through a tracheotomy incision in the front of his neck, as he was being transferred from the medical facility to a funeral home 62 miles away. While the family was making funeral plans, Mr. da Silva’s sister received a call from the funeral home that her brother was alive.
* Dead, alive … the standards must be looser in Brazil.
* At least they’ll be ahead of the game when he finally does kick.
* The old Traecheotomy Trick. The doctor must have missed that day in Brazil medical school.
* Never let your family be treated by doctors named Moe, Larry and Curly.
* Five hours to travel 62 miles! The guy must have been thinking, “Wow, this tunnel to the afterlife is pretty bumpy.”
* We get, like, a dozen of these stories every year. The lesson is, never die in South America. Although, apparently, no one actually does.