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A stunning mixup at a Canadian hospital led a family to mourn their son’s untimely death — until he texted his mother, seemingly from beyond the grave.
As the CBC reports, Heather Insley had already decided to donate the organs of her son, Sean Cox, when she received a mysterious text message from a number she didn’t know claiming to be him.
Cox, aged 43, had long struggled with addiction and had, as Insley believed, just died of complications related to his substance abuse. But he’d also often text or call from different numbers when he was in contact, as addicts are often wont to do — leaving the woman perturbed.
Insley’s husband, Bill, told her that the text was likely just a “sick joke,” but when she got another one a few days later, she called the number and heard her son’s voice on the other end of the line.
“We were freaked,” Insley told CBC.
Together with police in Ottawa, Insley and her husband were able to track Cox down and confirm that he was alive. When she went to go meet up with him, however, the Ontario woman said she went numb.
“I thought, oh my God, your funeral’s tomorrow,” the woman recounted. “I thought, I’m so happy he’s alive, but I just went through all that mourning.”
On New Year’s Day, when a man who greatly resembled Cox entered the hospital in Ottawa, a nurse got in contact with his family after having seen him come in a few months prior for an overdose.
Because his face was partially obscured by ventilators and his arms, which should have borne tattoos, were covered by a thermal blanket, Insley was unable to tell that the man in the hospital bed wasn’t her son — and had, unfortunately, never considered otherwise.
“He had the same haircut,” Insley said, “same thick hair, like my boy did — his long eyelashes.”
The identity of the deceased man remains unknown, but before learning they had the wrong person, the family had his handprint taken at the funeral home for a memento that may now serve as a means of helping identify him.
Because he’d died long enough before the mistake was realized, the unknown man’s organs had been donated per Insley’s wishes, too.
“He was able to save three lives, two kidneys and the liver,” she said.
Insley now blames both herself and the hospital.
“It was a grave mistake on their part and I blame myself for it,” she told CBC, “but I believed it was him without a shadow of a doubt.”
But her son tells CBC that he feels like he’s been “been given a second chance” to approach his life differently.
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