dearsweettea

Actually, in brain death, your heart keeps beating because you are on the ventilator and your heart is receiving oxygen. Within a week or two, your organs will shut down.

People who are in a vegetative state still have at least some brain function. Brain death means that your brain tissue has completely died.

In the US, when brain death occurs, the time of the confirmatory test is your official time off death. When the ventilator is removed, you will then reach asystole.

Happy birthday! Thank you for sharing your story. You, and others like you, are what keep me going on those long days at work. (I work with organ donation.)

Or small jet plane.

They were probably trying to allow your friend to be a Dontation after Cardiac Death donor, as explained elsewhere.

Because brain death is a legal time of death, they are able to go to the OR and cross clamp the heart just before recovering organs (to give them as much time to transplant as possible).