How did no one notice the wrong boy was alive for 3 weeks

[NewYearss]

So in Yorkshire the police have mixed up two boys, one who died in a crash and one on life support. They told the wrong family their boy had died and the other that their son was still alive.
I just don’t understand how this wasn’t picked up for three weeks. Surely the family visiting the wrong boy in hospital would notice straight away?

Is it possible that the family of the boy who is still alive, viewed the deceased and confirmed it was their son? Would there be any further checks?

When people have been in a severe car crash, their faces can become swollen and look distorted. The bruising all over would also make them unrecognisable. The same would have applied to the deceased. They may have been a similar build and colour. If the injured boy was on a breathing machine then he wouldn’t have spoken until he was able to breathe for himself and came off it. Which is why it was unnoticed for 3 weeks.

That's only half the story though, presumably they didn't just ignore the body of the boy who died because they "knew" who the one who survived was

So can a death certificate be revoked? I assume so somehow

Perhaps not issued yet? When my DH died last year it took nearly a month to get the death certificate. His body was with the Coroners for all that time.

Not to mention a constant stream of doctors telling you your family member probably isn't going to survive as well as other awful, traumatising conversations.

The first few days with my son in paeds intensive care consisted of

A conversation after his 17 minute cardiac arrest that he likely had a brain injury due to the time he was without oxygen to his brain and wouldn't be the same child he was before the cardiac arrest
Emergency surgery in my son's PICU room because they told me he wouldn't survive the trip to theatre
A conversation about the surgery in that he needed it to survive but he was so poorly and unstable that the surgery may actually kill him too
A conversation that he had made it through surgery but the next 48 hours would be critical, it was 50/50
A conversation that he was in septic shock and his right leg was so severely affected, it would probably have to be amputated
A conversation that he was in multi organ failure, both kidneys were no longer working, his bowel wasn't working and his heart was only pumping blood around the top half of his body.
A conversation that he needed further life support called ECMO to rest his heart and lungs as he now also had a chest infection
A conversation that he had deteriorated further and that visiting hours no longer applied to our family and that if people wanted to visit him, they should do so urgently
A conversation asking about christening and footprints/handprints as your husband who you have never even seen cry before is making noises you never thought possible a human could make

and at the end of the week? Just as you are feeling a little hopeful because he was still hanging on in there? A conversation about the test results and they tell you that your little boy who already has so many obstacles ahead of him has cancer.

I'd like to see anyone on this thread read that and tell me that they would be as confident, logical and even still upright after going through all of the above with their 8 year old child in a matter of days. I felt like I was floating and nothing felt real, they could've told me the sky was purple with pink spots and I would've agreed at that time.

No one knows how they will react and thankfully, very few will have to find out.

They are, but if the teenager had never required dental work there would be no distinguishing dental records. My daughter was in her 20s before having her first filling.

My dentist records the details of my children's teeth at each check up, even if they hadn't had any filings there might be information that could be used so I wouldn't discount that but I don't know what would happen if for example all the teeth were knocked out in the crash

It might be irrelevant anyway as we all know how hard it is to get regular dentist appointments in some parts of the country

The morbid answer is just how messed up the injuries leave a person. Don’t believe what the tv shows - people can be completely unrecognisable and false ID’s can be made on bodies by family in these circumstances.

This horrific even to read. I’m so sorry you went through all of that and I truly hope everything is as well as it can be now. I can’t imagine a person not having ptsd after that, I hope you have lots of support and help x

On top of the dreadful grief the parents also have to deal with the fact that they didn't recognise their son and didn't question the police / medics who told them this boy in the morgue or the hospital bed was their son. They will now be feeling guilty for not knowing when they absolutely shouldn't as this thread illustrates.

What???

"So he can’t have been that badly injured."

He was on LIFE SUPPORT!! You yourself said so in your initial post. You also said "he woke up" which indicates a coma. Which probably means a lot of head and facial injuries and swelling that might have left him unrecognizable.

It's happened before.

When my 16 year old son was hit by a car and was killed the process of identification was very stringent. I needed to identify him firstly for the police and then, a couple of days later, for the coroner. It is the identification by the next of kin that I’m finding confusing. I’m assuming both boys were very badly disfigured and, as such, police and coroners officer should have ensured that family were certain. I’ve also wondered about the height of the boys as this would have been seen at the post mortem and presumably relayed to family.
Its all terribly sad and I can hardly imagine the grief of both families

Thank you.

He has truly exceeded expectations. He is disabled now but not in the way it was expected, he doesn't have a brain injury and they were able to save his leg though the nerves and muscle are permanently damaged. He can't walk now or even stand due to his right leg and his bowel has never worked correctly since which means he doesn't absorb food correctly so he needs nutrition through a central line but only at night so day to day he can go to school etc as normal and he also needs to have a low fibre diet.

He's been in remission for almost a year and a half now. He was too unwell for chemotherapy and thankfully, the cancer was only in his bowel which they actually removed during his emergency surgery without even knowing it. Ideally, he would've had 2 'mop up' rounds to make sure no cancer was anywhere else in his body and to lessen the likelihood of a relapse but multiple oncologists agreed the risks outweighed the benefits. He did relapse 4 months later but he was stronger and was able to have chemotherapy this time thankfully.

I do have PTSD. It's been almost 2 years now and the nightmares and triggers have faded but it is definitely a work in progress.

My son is doing really well. He is chatty and confident and loves to show off his battle scars and tell anyone he meets that a shark bit him. 🙄😂

I am very sorry for your loss@Ithinkofawittyusernamethenforgetit

Your son sounds absolutely wonderful. I’d be showing off those scars too! You’ve done amazingly well to get through all that and still be able to tell your story and still be able to contribute to threads with your wisdom (I’m sure you’re contributing to society too but I don’t know about it).
I hope time heals you and your boy grows up be whomever he wants to be. It never ceases to amaze me how much devastation a family can suffer and still continue with life doing the best they can. Humans are amazing. You are amazing

@Kirbert2What a superstar boy you have. I’m so deeply sorry for all you’ve been through and continue to go through, but how wonderful he wasn’t left with brain damage. It’s this which really alters the person’s nature so him being ‘him’ is such a good thing.

The ignorance (in the truest sense of the word) of people on this thread about ICU is staggering. The bouncing from one traumatic conversation or event to another back to back for days and weeks has irreversibly changed me. And it was my mother not my child. Admittedly it was ‘only’ 9 months ago for me and we are still in the thick of daily needs, court cases etc, so maybe the impact will lessen in time, but right now it feels like the impact of those ICU days is irreparable and I’ll never be the same again. So to have people here suggesting they would be better people and couldn’t possibly fail to recognise a loved one is quite sickening.

It's staggering. He must have had serious injuries. I'd recognise my sons from one of their feet or hands, as I suspect most of us would, so he must have been almost mummified with bandages for the visiting family members not to realise it was not their child.

Broken feet, swollen hands covered in blood. You probably wouldn’t recognise them

FFS EVERY parent would recognise their child from their feet or hands if those features were a) not damaged and b) accessible.

WHy on earth are you bragging about this?

I am terribly sorry for your own grief and loss of your son - unimaginably painful.

But why would the height of a child be relayed to families?I have a son this age. He and his friends are all about the same height. I haven't actually measured my teenage son for many years - "slightly taller than his dad so about 5 foot 11 maybe" is about as accurate as you would get from me so I don't think anyone can be blamed for that.

I also don't know if height would be something like would occur to me as a parent. I have had a (young) child die from a medical condition and I can't even read the post mortem. For a child to die due to a car accident, the post mortem would be absolutely brutal to read.

There is a great lack of sympathy from many posters here. The families presumably were absolutely certain but the families are also experiencing incredible grief and worry and shock. No one knows how they would act in this situation and my heart absolutely goes out to both families - I do hope there is a huge amount of support for them all as they process all the grief they have and are experiencing

t does change you without a doubt. In bad ways of course but in good ways too and it is easier now that almost 2 years have passed to hold on to the good ways it has changed me.

9 months is still incredibly early, it is still so raw. It will lessen with time and it is a very gradual process. I feel like almost 2 years later, I'm still processing some of what happened but have learnt to adapt to our new normal and have let go a lot of the anger I had during that first year.

It is sickening but they very likely have no idea what it is like. It's hard to comprehend when you have gone through it, I think it's impossible if you haven't gone through it. It's largely ignorance and a 'it would never happen to me' denial that many people have in situations like this.

It’s definitely a strange one, although both boys apparently looked similar (I’ve only seen a recent pic of one of them) and have also read that the parents did not know both boys, which I guess may also have made it harder to tell. If it was a friend you were familiar with I assume there’s a higher chance that you’d walk in and say “that’s not X that’s Y” but who knows. Tubes/bandages/general injuries can all distort how a person looks, even more so if they need their head shaved or something for surgery. The girl driving also sadly passed so wouldn’t have been able to clarify where each person was sat.

I am most intrigued by how the identification process happened by the police though. They have to have used some method to determine who was who but short of each boy having the other ones ID on them for whatever reason I can’t work out what it could be.

@Kirbert2 I don't feel there are any words. Just 💜

I think what I was trying to say ( maybe clumsily) is solely based on my own experience of identification following a traumatic death.
In this horrendous situation there were two seriously hurt boys, only one alive. Given this I’m shocked that the identification of the boy who died was not more thorough if both boys were similar age etc. ( hence my comment about height)
I am so sorry for your loss too. The pain is sometimes beyond words