DEC 14 / FOUND OUT MASON NEEDED OPEN HEART SURGERY

I remember waking up with an uneasy feeling, like I knew something wasn’t right. I showered and ate some breakfast. I had run out of my pain prescription so my mom took me to Walgreens to get a refill. When I got back, not even 5 min later I get a call. It was a 562 number and I immediately thought “THE HOSPITAL” I quickly picked up. This was the first time I didn’t have to call them; they called me so I started worrying. The nurse asked me if I was baby boy Morales’ mother I replied yes and she began telling me that my baby was really sick. She told me they had done an echocardiogram and they had diagnosed him with CHD. I panicked over the phone, Hearing that your baby had a heart problem that would require open heart surgery was too much to handle. I started crying to the nurse asking her “is he going to be ok???” The only thing she replied was “I thinking you should come down soon” I felt it, I knew something was going to happen. I had my dad rush me to the hospital. When I got there, there must have been like 7 doctors around his incubator…and there he was almost lifeless. For a second I thought he was gone. I started crying and the cardiologist told me we needed to have a private talk. I told my dad to stay with him and that I was going to go have a meeting with the doctors. There was a cardiologist a neonatologist a GI doctor and the head of the NICU. I knew this was serious; I tried to keep my composure. I didn’t want these doctors to think that I was just some young girl that didn’t understand anything they were telling me. So I tried to focus as much as I could. The doctor told me the echo had shown something called a Coarctation of the Aorta; this was a narrowing in the main Aorta. They proceeded to tell me that his PDA was the only thing letting blood flow to the lower part of his body. They had now started checking both his upper body saturations as well as the lower; this meant he had to have 2 pulse ox at all times. This was also causing a lower blood pressure which meant not enough blood was getting to all his organs. He was becoming amitotic as well. They told me he required surgery to repair his coarc. They then told me he wouldn’t make it through open heart surgery right now this small, not only that but no doctor in the US would operate on a heart that small. My hopes instantly shattered, what do you mean my baby needs surgery but he can’t have it?? What does this mean? What outcome is he going to have and is he even going to have one? They told me they were going to work on getting his BP and saturations from lower and upper body to correlate. We also made a plan; if Mason was to survive to 1800 grams he would be able to have his surgery. If worse came to worse he would be transferred to Children’s of LA where they could probably treat him better. I remember thinking…How was this going to happen when my baby was 5 days old and he was still not getting fed anything but TPN. How can a baby girl with no real nutrition, In that moment I lost all hope and told myself he would most likely not make it. I was asked to leave his bedside because 2 nurses were working on giving him transfusions and hooking up all of his medications. This was a 2 lb baby getting 12 different medications. His blood gases were getting worst by the hour. We went downstairs and grabbed some coffee, I had a conversation with my dad and he told me that everything was in God’s hands and that that’s where I should leave it. If God wanted Mason to stay, everything would be ok. But if he didn’t then there was nothing I could do about it but accept his will. And I did, for the 3^rd time I placed Mason in God’s hands. I knew God was big and strong and capable of anything. If he wanted to he could heal Mason without his surgery. I came back upstairs and talked to a doctor, I told him I wanted to be real with me! I wanted to know what the chances of my baby surviving were. He shattered me even more when he said, I think you should prepare for the worst, I don’t think he’ll make it through the night. Tears ran down my face, but I needed to be real! This may be the last time I spent with him and I did not want to do it crying…From that day forward I told God I would never come sit here and cry and feel sorry for him. He was fighting and I was going to fight just as hard. I sang to him and stayed by his side until got hungry and we went downstairs to have a quick dinner. Louis met me up at the hospital, He was aware of everything that had happened. We were going to spend our babies last hours together. When I went downstairs I remember praying to God, to show me a miracle. I was asking so hard with such feeling I actually felt like God was there listening to me. That’s when God proved to me one more time how great he was. When I went back up the first good news was that his blood gases were getting much better. Second good news was that his blood pressure was stabilizing and they had gone down on some pressers. The third, He woke up for a few minutes. It was the greatest gift God could ever give me. That night the nurse told me to never lose hope on him. That these little ones were warriors and that Mason wanted to live so he was fighting. I was so proud, here was a baby that needed surgery and was getting better without it. God had proven to me once again just how powerful he was. That night Mason kept getting better. All his cultures were negative and we had now gone down really low on the epinephrine almost low enough to turn off and his BP was still stable as well as his saturations. He was still on the jet high frequency ventilator but they told me this would probably help him a lot more because of his premature lungs. I was so happy that night; I had just gone from no hope to Mason making me never lose hope on him. I couldn’t be more proud to be his mother, He was 5 days old and I loved him more than my life. That night I got home and did the most research I had done in my life, we researched about coarc repairs and doctors that had performed them on such small babies. I remember finding a doctor, and Louis emailing him for help. He was luckily at Children’s Of LA. When Louis got a respond for him he told us he had already heard about Mason and that he was in contact with his doctors. I was amazed, we googled and came across this doctor randomly the only one that had done successful surgeries and he was here in my city. I told myself everything would be ok. Today is day 6 and Mason thought us the true meaning of a miracle.