Man presumed dead wakes at morgue, dies 'again' during funeral preparation

Huang was reportedly suffering from terminal stomach cancer and when his wife noticed he was not breathing, she assumed he had passed on.

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In a bizzare incident in China, a local woman in Shiyan in the country's northwestern Hubei province assumed that her husband had died after finding him motionless on their bed, only for him to wake at the mortuary and then die momentarily after.

Local media reports quotes Chen as saying that since her husband - Huang - had long been suffering from terminal stomach cancer, she assumed he had died when his body lay motionless. Huang's body was promptly sent to the morgue but when a cosmetologist came in a few hours later, he noticed slight movement around the mouth and hand. He then informed medical officials but by the time expert help came in, Huang had indeed passed on.

Chen later reportedly said that her husband had been suffering for a long time and that her family had spent all its savings to cover the cost of medical treatment. She added that doctors had eventually said that no further treatment would work and that when she found that her husband was not breathing, she assumed he had died.

Interestingly, mortuary workers here said that they have seen such instances previously as well when a body appears lifeless but is still alive - in medical terminology. “It’s easy for a patient to be pronounced as dead if his limbs are cold, his body is stiff, his vital signs are weak," a mortuary worker called Ren was quoted as saying. "But this is not the first time we have noticed something like this. Unfortunately, though, by the time medical team arrived, Huang had lost his life and the death was formally pronounced."