Drugs are good.....Blood draws are bad

Okay, not all of drugs are good, but some of them are. After bumping up Mason's steroids and giving him the heavy duty diuretic, he's doing a bit better. He's much happier and back to laughing/giggling and playing, though still needing more oxygen than he should. We had a great time playing with him last evening. He was sitting in his crib doing that bouncing thing that kids do and wanted Mama, Papa, and Staramama to join him - we would do it, then he would mimic it - it was hilarious. So we took turns bouncing up and down while trying to catch our breath from laughing so hard. Last night we also saw his heart rate go down to a "normal" sleeping heart rate for the first time in months, he slept through the night (so did we), and he was saturating too high on the same amount of oxygen -- all good things.

Then this morning, another blood draw - again - not good. The lab people always have a hard time getting blood and unfortunately, the more agitated Mason gets (wouldn't you after multiple pokes), the less accurate some of the lab values are. So, we have to take the carbon dioxide and blood acidity levels (the 2 most important tests) at face value, but interpret them as inaccurate - which begs the question, why draw the lab in the first place.......

We're likely going to be here at least to tomorrow if not a little bit longer. They are going to try and taper the steroid starting tonight and see if he can return to his "normal." If that doesn't go well, we'll likely be here another day or so after that. We shall see.....