Happy St. Patricks

"Happy St. Patricks Day!" from Mason

It’s been two weeks now since Mason was put on the Transplant list! He’s doing okay, we’re enjoying the sunshine and the beautiful spring flowers, but it sure would be nice for my cell phone to ring in the middle of the night with someone from the transplant team on the other end saying “We have a heart for Mason!”. Oh how we HOPE and long for that day to come sooner than later!!

Thinking of that day makes me nervous, scared, excited, sad, happy…….but yet a feeling of calming love overwhelms me from my Father Above. He’s letting me know all will be well with Mason as we will have to send him off to a very risky surgery, and with the sweet donor family as they will mourn the loss of their child. My emotions are like a roller coaster, my eyes filled with tears, but with faith we go forward with this journey to give our Miracle Mason a new chance at life.

Instead of that exciting phone call we await in the middle of the night……Mason was really sick the night before last. He threw up and dry heaved ALL night. I didn’t get him to sleep that night (or morning I should say) until 6am. I was afraid he was getting the flu or something, but I think it was just a bad heart night. After being rather lethargic and not himself yesterday by last night he seemed to be feeling better and today he is back to his happy self. Hopefully he won’t have many more of those episodes before he becomes our “new healthy little boy” with a new heart!

I did a little research on optn.transplant.hrsa.gov which is The Organ Procurement and Transplant Network. This site has numbers of all organ candidates (those listed for a transplant) in the United States. Mason is listed in Region 5 for heart transplant, which includes California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada. So here is what I found: Mason has a blood type of A+ (I guess – or + doesn’t matter though, just the A type) and he is the only one listed right now in the 1-5 year old category with blood type A at Lucille Packard (Stanford Children’s). There are a total of 4 candidates with his blood type and age category in our region, which all happen to be in California. (There are, I think, 4 pediatric heart transplant centers in Southern California.)

Although, I have no way of knowing at what priority the other kiddos are listed, 4 kiddos waiting for the same heart that can come from 5 different states sounds like a lot to me! Wow! But on the brighter side at least it’s not 14 or 44! At least I do know that some special night soon ‘the stars and moon will all line up’ and Mason will be gifted his special heart……..just how soon that is and what “soon” really is I have left in the Lord’s hands.

And a special THANK YOU to a special friend whom donated enough sky miles to our family for probably two plane tickets! We are soooo grateful!!!!

We hope your St Patty’s Day was filled with many golden coins (chocolate ones will work) and beautiful rainbows…….With Love, Summer and Mason

Here's a few picture sent to me from home: