The Holidays Were Happy, but now Parainfluenza Hits!

     I am happy to report that Mason made it though the holidays happy and healthy! In fact our whole family stayed healthy and bug free. This made for some fun and festive family holiday activities. Mason was super excited about Christmas this year, well except if anyone mentioned going to visit Santa. He's afraid of that jolly chubby man in the red suit! Mason also enjoyed playing with some of his cousins this Christmas season who were here visiting from out of town. It was so nice to let him feel included in all the family activities. He even stole the show on Christmas Eve doing his "gangnam style" dance for everyone!

        Too bad the healthy fun didn't last longer, Mason was admitted last friday (January 11) to Primary Children's with para influenza (respiratory flu), some pneumonia in his infamous left lung (the lung that doesn't get blood flow), and a positive blood culture. He'd been sick most of the week with high fevers and a nasty cough so Thursday the transplant team had him get lab work done. 

Friday morning I got a call from cardiology that Mason had a positive blood culture and they needed him to come into Primary's ER right away to draw more labs, admit him, and start IV antibiotics. A positive blood culture can be very scary because it can mean there's bacteria in the blood stream (in other words 'septic'). But, it is also very possible when you get a positive culture that there was a contaminant, which is what we've been hoping for. The para influenza came up positive after Mason was admitted, which really explains the fevers and cough.

Mason has had a central line (PICC) in since beginning of November to administer the IV meds for the CMV. We left it in even when he finished the course of IV meds because we've been waiting to get the line turned into a port (or port-a-cath), but doing this increased the risk of infection. S0 the main concern has been the possibility of bacteria getting into his blood through the central line. When we came in Friday they drew new cultures. This time from 2 spots. One was through his PICC line again and the other from a vein in his arm. The good news is that the one from his arm grew nothing, so there's NO bacteria in his blood stream! The new one from his PICC was positive for bacteria again though. But since then the cultures (he's had them drawn daily) even through his PICC line have all been negative. So now the consensus is that there was probably a contaminant of bacteria in the tubing of his PICC line that has now been cleared out from the IV antibiotics.

Mason is still in the hospital receiving IV antibiotics for the bacteria in his PICC and the pneumonia. His para influenza symptoms seem to be running their course but getting better. tomorrow Mason is scheduled to have his PICC removed and his port placed. We've had it scheduled for a few weeks ago. We've been waiting for the doctor who placed the PICC to come back on service because Mason has very tricky veins and he said he could place the port for us. We are taking a risk putting him under anesthesia for this while he has para influenza and pneumonia, but after weighing it out we've decide it's more important to get the PICC out. And he does seem to be feeling much better than he did last week at least.

The plan is to go home tomorrow night after he recovers from the procedure and he will continue the course of IV antibiotics at home. Please pray and send positive thoughts our way tomorrow that all will go well and we can check out of the Hotel on the Hill! Thank you!!!

Here are some fun holiday pictures:

 

The Sunday before Christmas we were all

dressed up for church.

I haven't been letting Mason go to church since he

got so sick in November, but Christmas Sunday I 

made an exception so we could go as a family. 

(We were all there together for the first hour then I

took him home to avoid sicky germs in primary class.)

For Sunday dinner we hung out with cousins.

Christmas Eve in new pajamas.

Everyone was so excited for Chiristmas, they were

acting too silly to take a decent picture!

And here's Christmas morning.....

Mason got new big boy pants and put them on

right away. 

We had a very white Christmas

so this called for sledding....

 

and bundling up to play in the snow.

We also had fun celebrating Mark's Birthday on Jan. 4th

Thanks for checking in on us. We appreciate all your

prayers, love, kindness, and support! I will update

again soon. Happy New Year!!!