This past Monday (3/11) was the start of my son's spring break. We woke up to find that his trach collar had slid around off his trach causing him to dry out (first time this had ever happened). We didn't think he had a mucus plug (later turned out we were wrong, but that is getting ahead of myself), though he was acting odd when he tried to sleep. Tuesday morning he kept trying to fall asleep due to not sleeping right the night before (he kept kind of gasping for air when he fell asleep Monday night and kept waking up). I had set up with him the whole night because of being concerned.

Tuesday he kept dozing off and still breathing odd so we took him to his primary doctor where they did a breathing treatment and it seemingly helped the problem as he started acting like himself again. About 5pm Tuesday he started acting odd again then started asking for the ventilator we no longer had (just did a sleep study a month and a half ago to get him off of it), which made us realize something wasn't right so we ran to the local ER. First they lost his papers after admitting him, then came back saying he absolutely had pneumonia in his right lung on top of having two spots of tracheomalacia in his left lung. So they sent us all the way to Riley's Children Hospital ER where we found they had put the ID bracelet of some 37 year old guy on my son (which later revealed he had no pneumonia in his lung...wrong x-rays).

They admitted him with breathing distress and sent him to the 8th floor where they coded him three times (stopped breathing and turned blue) and had to do chest compressions once. To add to the stress, I had to block out the emotions I was feeling in order for me and my father-in-law to do an emergency trach change after the second code. They got his stats back up after the third time and put him on a vent again then sent him to the intensive care unit from Wednesday morning to Friday evening. Friday evening they moved him back up to the 8th floor for overnight observation and just released us this morning. Thank God he is acting himself again and we are making sure his heated trach collar is still over his trach as we don't want to go through this again.

We had wanted his trach removed as we thought he didn't need it, but after him coding three times, we have come to realize that without it we could have been planning a funeral right now instead of counting our blessings.

On a brighter note, he did have me draw a lot yesterday and today since he was feeling better and I figured I'd share it with everyone. In spoilers as it really has nothing to do with the point of this thread, an update about what has been going on with me and my family as to why I suddenly had disappeared from the forums this week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracheotomy

At least, I'm assuming this is what he went through. Still, that's pretty crazy going through all that ridiculousness with the missing papers and wrong ID bracelet and everything. I'm glad your son's doing better now, Specter!

Glad to hear the potentially horrible situation turned out okay. Wrong IDs can lead to wrong operations and wrong drugs. My sister felt feint after taking a prescription a couple times. Looking at the label, she realized she had been taking some probably older man's heart medication. I think the notoriously bad hand writing of doctors is to blame for many of these errors, when computer print isn't used.

Having to keep constantly in touch with hospitals is REALLY sucky...I had my share for my father's last years.

You don't think those kind of mistakes should ever happen....indeed they DO happen a whole shucking lot.

Glad this turned out to a (somewhat) bright ending Specter, hug him an extra today for me.

Don't. Even. Think. About. It.

That wasn't a normal computer IIRC. F'ing supercomputer. I've heard you can also pretty accurately predict some lab results. Stochastics freak me out.