It was now March, Mason had now reached his due date. He was no longer being counted as adjusted age he was now a full term baby! I had imagined me taking him home on his due date but we weren't quite close to that. I was beginning to get a little concerned so I arranged a meeting with his doctors. I wanted to know what the plan was, we had already tried extubating but apparently that was not working thats when they first introduced the idea for a tracheotomy. I have to admit I wasn't too thrilled with the idea, But this wasn't a for sure thing yet, we would continue to try and let Mason do it on his own before we agreed that a trach was the best option. I was ok with this but at the time I didnt know better, I trusted his doctors in wanting to give Mason another try. We would let him recover from the pulmonary edema and pulmonary hypertension and try another round of steroids to try and help him and see if that worked. On March 4th I was in a car accident, my car was hit from behind on the freeway and was tottled. This took a big toll on me as I now would be out of a car for at least a week. I needed my transportation to go see my baby but luckily I was fine and I managed to get around with either Louis' help or my moms. If I recall correctly March was the month where I started being able to bring people in to see him. I was ecstatic about this as I and my parents aswell as Louis had been the only ones able to see him. So I started bringing in my closest friends, I made the terrible mistake of not taking a picture with each person I took to visit him. I cant recall the dates but I can name on the top of my head who were the people I brought over to see him, My sister in law Lesslie was one of them, my friend Nancy, my friend Adilene, my friend Cindal, my friend Erica, My sister Katherine, He boyfriend Gil, My Sister in law Carmen, My aunt Alicia, My co worker David, My brother Erick and his wife and I believe that was it. Those people along with his parents and grandparents were the only ones who got to meet my precious boy. If I forgot to mention anyone I am truly sorry but those were all I could think at the top of my head.
By the time people got to actually come and see my baby he was passed the preemie stage and looked a lot more like a baby, I cant recall correctly but since cell phones weren't allowed in the NICU no one ever took pictures of him on there own except for my mother, my father and his dad's father who I remember clearly taking in a camera when he came in to see him. By March 6th my baby was 40 weeks 5 days gestation or 87 days old. And he was 5lbs and 5oz they only measured him once every 2 weeks so Im not real sure how long he was at this age. The first 2 weeks of March werent the best ones for Mason, he was being taken off really strong meds and was withdrawing real bad. He was not only on a lose dose of his fentanyl he was also on methadone and he had Ativan PRN. So he was still pretty sedated but they were working on weaning him off although he would get so aggitated, who could blame him though with that huge tube down his throat. By the 8th Mason was taking 11 ML for 6 hours straight then off 2 hours so he was taking 2 oz in a 6 hr period as well as TPN and lipids. He was tolerating feeds really well and was working on his way down the ventilator settings.
He had chest xrays done every other day and they were improving really well so we were once on our way back to trying to re-extubate and we were really positive about it this time. He would once more than a dose of surfactant and we would once again try...It was trial and error, we couldn't do anything but try. If we were not trying we were staying at the same place. Mason was now also started on a drug for his pulmonary hypertension, He was started on Viagra which I found out not only works for erectile dysfunction but aswll as pulmonary hypertension. It was a PO med so he would get it by mouth, it was working wonders because he was doing really well and lowering his vent settings by the day and getting closer to being able to extubate him. I loved that Mason wasnt getting poked every 3 hrs to get a blood gas they were now reading his end tittles on the CO2 machine to wean him on the vent. He was controlling his CO2 levels really well so there was no need for pocking very often which meant a very happy Mason.
we were once again back on track, the 2 remaining weeks were Mason's best weeks yet. This was March 1 to 14 and Mason was once again working towards getting extubated<3
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