Mason Ryder: On the Mend

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted about Mason. As you can probably guess, Brielle's arrival, struggle with her heart condition, and premature passing has consumed our thoughts, prayers, and energy these past few weeks. We continue to hold our friends Kristie and Ike in our prayers as they travel down this difficult road.

Mason has completely recovered from his aspiration pneumonia and has been doing fairly well with his oxygen need. We were so thankful that he responded well to the antibiotic and steroid burst, and even more thankful that he tolerated the weaning of the steroid back to his usual dose without a problem. He has continued to spit up pretty regularly despite an increase in his anti-reflux medication. We've made an appointment to see the GI doctor again at the end of the month and hopefully she'll be able to help us figure out how to stop the reflux/spitting up so that we don't risk another aspiration pneumonia. The surgery last December was supposed to prevent 90% of the reflux and spitting up, but doesn't seem to be as effective now as it was last winter. We'll keep you posted on what we find out.

We're also focusing on a few things in Mason's development in the coming months. This week, we are going to start working with an Early Childhood Development teacher to help us improve Mason's communication and cognitive skills. At nearly 18 months, Mason should be able to use some sign language and have more words in his vocabulary (still really only saying Mama and dog). Hopefully, with the teacher's guidance, we can help improve Mason's skills so we can better understand how to care for him. Mason also continues to lag behind in his gross and fine motor skills. He has made tremendous improvement through the summer, but has a long way to go to catch up. We will continue to work with his home physical therapist and see the PT in the clinic regularly to get more and more ideas of how to help his motor development as well.

It seems there is always something to be focusing on or working on, but when I think back to where we were at this time last year, I'm amazed at how far we've come. This weekend, last year, we did our first trial run at a vacation. We spend 1 1/2 days in Central Oregon and had to come home emergently because Mason's oxygen need went up too high. He was spitting up 2-3 times per day and his feeding tube (through his nose at the time) was coming out that many times, too. He was way too skinny and had recently been diagnosed with "failure to thrive" (I don't think you can say that anymore - now he's just a chunky monkey!!). Looking back, he was still so sickly. He was so weak. He is so much stronger and more resilient today. Its amazing what a difference a year makes!

This is one of my favorite pictures of Mason from September 2008