On October 21 Mason, Daddy and I traveled to Albuquerque to visit with Mason's cardiologist, Dr. Goens and visit with the Pediatric Surgeon, Dr. Lemon. The good news was that Dr. Goens believed that Mason's heart looked good enough to get rid of the Digoxin and simply increase his Enalapril. The reason being that the Digoxin was used to increase the forcefulness of his ventricle and was especially needed after December's life-threatening events. His heart has recovered enough to hopefully keep him off of the Digoxin for some time. As Dr. Goens explained to me, the goal is to keep Mason's own heart functioning as well as possible for as long as possible. We wouldn't want to wear it out further by keeping his ventricle pumping more forcefully with the Digoxin. She did comment that she thought perhaps there was a slight decrease in function since his last echo but that was subjective. Give it to someone else to read and they might not see the same thing. So to us, all looked pretty darn good.
Now, his peds surgery visit was not as nice. After discussion and evaluation from the med student, Dr. Lemon and Dr. Lemon's nurse it was decided that we try the silver nitrate first in order to hopefully avoid surgery to close his still, leaking fistula. (g-tube site) We had to hold Mason down while the nurse pushed in the swab that contained the silver nitrate into his g-tube fistula. Not a good thing. She asked the med student to hold his legs down while I took his arms. The nurse was apparently a little frustrated with the student's inability to hold his little legs down. She commented to the student, "Now you see, he has been through things like this before, he knows what he is doing and how to move his legs, you have to hold them down!" Of course, she took over the leg part and held him down and applied the silver nitrate at the same time. Horrible for Mason but worse for Ernie and I when we had to do it at home on Saturday. The wonderful news is that it looks like it might have worked! I pray that his fistula closes and we can avoid surgery. It would only be a minor surgery, but I am so afraid of him undergoing anesthesia without a cardiac anthesiologist on hand. Maybe I don't understand the "minimal" risks but I would feel better having any surgery done on Mason out of state! All that being said, look what happened in December at Stanford, of all places. We'll just have to give to God, I know he is taking care of us. So all in all, the visit was "uneventful" and deemed a success! Thank you God!
I almost forgot to metion, Mason took a couple of steps on his own, two times, both while Billy and Marsie were over at the house. I guess he was just showing off! We know he'll be walking in no time. Now then, we'll really have something to report.
Well, it was this date last year that we were getting ready to travel to Palo Alto, CA for Mason's Glenn surgery. That was to be the "easy" surgery. As if any open heart surgery could be easy, but as you know it turned out to be the worst one for our little Mason. Thankfully, we had some divine intervention and he pulled through. Today, we live almost normal lives, trying to keep the gravity of his condition in the depths of our minds. Whenever I tap into those thoughts I turn teary eyed and can't help but imagine the worst. It usually doesn't happen unless I have read someone else's blog. Someone whos child has not been so lucky and is still in the hospital, someone's child whose heart is starting to fail and they now await a transplant or someone's child whose passed. It's always someone. It just doesn't seem right that it has to be a little child with so much to give.
