**Please see note below if you are looking to make a donation for Mason. Tributes made here on Caring Bridge go towards the site.
On 10/18/19 at 12:44am we welcomed Mason into our lives. He was the perfect addition to our family.
We were able to go home with our healthy baby boy on 10/20/19. Over the next couple of days, we noticed that he was starting to look a little more yellow and wasn’t nursing as well as he was. Jaundice is something we had dealt with before when Kali was a newborn. Kali had to go for weekly bilirubin checks as well as require a bili blanket at home. We went in for checks with Mason as well and his first check was higher than Kali’s ever was. We had the bili blanket at home for Mason for about 24 hours before our primary doctor recommended Mason be re-admitted to the hospital for photo-therapy there. We were admitted to the pediatric floor at St. Mary’s Friday 10/25. Shortly after we got there, Mason spiked a fever.
They suspected infection and started to run additional tests and he needed to have a spinal tap. He tested positive for entero virus meningitis. Since it is a viral infection and not bacterial, antibiotics wouldn’t help. They soon transferred Mason to the NICU floor at St. Mary’s because his breathing was being affected by the infection. He had to be intubated and sedated. They noticed on a chest/belly x-ray that Mason’s heart was enlarged. He was then diagnosed with Myocarditis, which was a result of the infection going through his heart by his blood. His left side of his heart doesn’t function properly, he has a leak in his mitral valve and he had a blood clot (which is no longer there). On Halloween, after a scare at St. Mary’s, we were transferred to the Children’s Hospital in Madison because they had an ECMO machine. ECMO is a heart lung bypass machine.
Once getting to the children’s hospital, they decided Mason didn’t need the ECMO machine at that time. They had Mason sedated and we were told it was going to be a long road for him to recover and it was going to be a waiting game. They spent days trying to find the balance of medications and sedation for his body to be able to work off the virus and his heart to start to heal. After many ups and downs, we were then transferred to the Children’s hospital in Milwaukee because they had better options here, including everything needed for a heart transplant if it came down to that.
We have now been in Milwaukee since Wednesday 11/13/19. Since being here, he has been doing well. They have been keeping him comfortable and still trying to find the balance of everything while not trying to over work his heart so it can get better. Michael and I decided to have him evaluated for a heart transplant just in case it did come down to that. We would already have that long process complete and we would possibly be a step ahead. We hope and pray every second of every day he can get through this on his own without that need of a transplant.
This has been the hardest thing we have ever been through. We appreciate everyone’s love and support. We are so humbled by the concern for our baby boy. We will continue to take all the prayers we can get. We hope for Mason’s heart to be able to recover from this. He is such a strong little boy. Our parents have been amazing through this past month by taking care of and spoiling Kali. We are thankful she is young enough to not really understand what is going on, other than she doesn’t see Mom and Dad very much. We miss our baby girl and we know she misses her baby brother so much.
We will continue to post updates when we have an update we would like to share.
**Many people have asked about contributing monetarily. We are certainly not asking for anything but are so humbled by everyone’s generosity. If you are looking to make a donation towards Mason, please use Venmo(kaperez7817) or linked gofundme account is
https://www.gofundme.com/f/d3u8bh-team-mason?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1 
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