Dunlap, 21, was pronounced dead on November 19 at United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, Texas, after he was injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident. His family approved having his organs harvested.
As family members were paying their last respects, he moved his foot and hand. He reacted to a pocketknife scraped across his foot and to pressure applied under a fingernail.
After 48 days in hospital, he was allowed to return home where he continues to work on his recovery.
On Monday he and his family were in New York, appearing on NBC’s Today morning show.
“I feel pretty good. But it’s just hard... just ain’t got the patience," Dunlap told NBC.
He said he had no recollection of the crash.
Little memory
“I remember a little bit that was about an hour before the accident happened. But then about six hours before that, I remember,” he said. Dunlap said one thing he did remember was hearing the doctors pronounce him dead. “I’m glad I couldn’t get up and do what I wanted to do,” he said.
Asked if he would have wanted to get up and shake them and say he is alive, Dunlap responded: “Probably would have been a broken window that went out.” His father, Doug, said he saw the results of the brain scan. “There was no activity at all, no blood flow at all.”
Zach’s mother Pam said that when she discovered he was still alive it was “the most miraculous feeling.”
“We had gone, like I said, from the lowest possible emotion that a parent could feel to the top of the mountains again,” she said.
‘Good die young’
She said her son was doing “amazingly well,” but still has problems with his memory as his brain heals from the traumatic injury.
Dunlap now has the pocketknife that was scraped across his foot, causing the first reaction. “Only the good die young, so I didn't go.”