Our Lil' Hero: October 2012

Monday, October 1, 2012

A Day to Celebrate

Mason is TWO!!!!!

I am feeling so blessed today knowing we made it through another year, and a good year at that! It has been over a year since we have had an admission and Mason is doing great and acts like your typical little toddler boy! Two years ago it was uncertain he would make it to the next day, let alone to two years old! Mason is so fun and spunky! He loves Mickey Mouse, Elmo, anything with wheels, bubble baths, his blankie, oreos, and most of all he loves family and people in general. Everywhere we go people are drawn to his loving personality. He says hi to everyone and tells them something about wherever we are. Nobody can ever get enough of him. He is definatly one special little kiddo. He is still on the small size but you know what they say, dynamite comes in small packages. We had his birthday party over the weekend and one of our family members said, watch when he is older he will be in extreme sports! He is really that crazy and active plus on top of it he is super coordinated! He weighs 19.4 lbs and is 30 inches long. His heart is still doing really good so we are hoping we can stay healthy through the winter and keep our roll of no admissions. I have to thank my good friend Stephanie for taking these great pics for us, they couldn't be more perfect! You can see more of her work here.

Happy Birthday Mason, we love you so much and are so glad you are apart of our family! You have taught us more about life in the past 2 years than somepeople learn in a lifetime. You make us want to be better people. Your big personality can change any bad day into a good one! Keep fighting, we know you can win!♥

A little about Mason

This is a journey through Hypoplasic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). Mason was born on October 1, 2010 as what we thought was a healthy normal baby boy. At 3 weeks old we found out when he was life flighted to Primary Children's Medical Center that he was born with an Unbalanced AV Canal Defect that caused him to have Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. He also was diagnosed with 2 Large ASD's a VSD, a CoArch of the Aorta, and a small leaky Mitral Valve. He had his first open heart surgery, the Norwood, in the end of October 2010. After surgery his chest was left open and they surgically closed it a few days later after the swelling went down. He had his second open heart surgery, the Glenn, in January 2011. He did great with recovery and got discharged 1 week later. We had him home for 1 day then he was rushed back to the hospital where they found he had a sternal infection and had to open him back up and wash out all the infection and he had a picc line placed for 6 weeks for antibiotics. He had a couple of heart caths during that time, and echo every 3-6 months, and eye surgery.
In February 2013 we sent his records to Boston to explore different surgical options for him. We found out he was a candidate for a surgery called the Staged Left Ventricle Recruitment to the BiVent. With this surgery it would grow his left ventricle to normal size and then give him normal circulation to hopefully avoid him having to have a heart transplant. (if we didn't go this route we have been told with his anatomy he would need a transplant in his teens). With the help of friends, family, and strangers we went to Boston where he had the first of hopefully only 2 surgeries. He had his 3rd open heart surgery in June and right now his heart is growing and conditioning to be able to handle the load of the work that a normal heart does. He is due to have his 4th open heart surgery in the first of 2014.