Topix Underground

Organ recipient dies after donor’s rabies infection went undetected

James stunned the skunk before it could attack the kitten.

“He said he grabbed it by the neck, and he literally, you know, pushed it up against the house,” Kim said. “He said he just gave it a few punches and everything, but in grabbing it, he said he got scratched.”

James downplayed the wound on his left shin.

“He’s like, ‘I’m - I’ll be fine. It’s just a scratch. I’ll just put, you know, Neosporin on it, and I’ll be fine after I get it cleaned,” Kim remembered.

But he wasn’t fine.

Over the next few months, that scratch would lead to a series of medical catastrophes.

On the day he lost consciousness and fell into a coma in December 2024, James Martin seemed to be talking to someone in his bedroom who didn’t exist.

“I had to go wake him up and go, ‘Honey, who are you talking to?” Kim Martin, his widow, recalled.

No one knew it at the time, but medical professionals believe James, 59, had been infected with rabies about five weeks earlier, during an encounter with a skunk in the front yard of his Idaho home.

The delirium may have been a symptom of the fatal disease that had been quietly working its way through his system.

“We had no idea,” Kim said.

James was an organ donor

The first day James was in the hospital, Kim said she learned her husband had signed up to be an organ donor.

"It just made me smile and go, 'That’s him. That’s just him. Like, that’s the big, tender panda bear of him, to help someone else,’” she said.


"At the time, his death seemed like a heart-related issue, so his organs– untested for rabies - were donated to recipients and researchers in six states."





Wow man. That's a drag. Mixing body parts.  I was really hoping my brother was going to need one of my kidneys. I never liked him. I used to brush my dog's teeth with his toothbrush when we were kids.

"Man fatally shoots himself as Detroit police raid home, person of interest being sought"


I'm not a homicide detective but I watch that 'Law & Order' show with Vincent D'noffrio. My guess is that the 'person of interest' is the one lying on the floor with a hole in his head and a gun in his hand.

Waco would own that bridge

I WOULD NOT GO UP ON THAT BRIDGE FOR $1 BILLION.

"Man fatally shoots himself as Detroit police raid home, person of interest being sought"


I'm not a homicide detective but I watch that 'Law & Order' show with Vincent D'noffrio. My guess is that the 'person of interest' is the one lying on the floor with a hole in his head and a gun in his hand.

HE’S ONE OF MY FAVORITE ACTORS.

Joined the Wildcat they ask how I felt about Christian Laettner, said he was a square crying victim wuz, Gilgous learned the flop foul from um

YOU SHOULD GET A MEDAL FOR THAT.

I WOULD NOT GO UP ON THAT BRIDGE FOR $1 BILLION.

I'm talking a year or so ago, you know, when you were jumping over mountains eating canned spinach competing against the other high roller... You'd jump over it, that's what you'd do... 1 billion dollars in your face? You're skydiving over North Korea I bet