Broken

For the 3rd time in Mason's life, we have decided to continue with the therapies he is on, but to withhold cardiac resuscitation if his heart should stop. Sorry to be that blunt, but unfortunately, we are at that point.

Mason continued on the albuterol treatment throughout the night and unfortunately got some fluid in his lungs at times because of the setup. With that mishap, we have decided not to continue the continuous treatment, but will continue with albuterol puffs every 2 hours. It seemed to help him while he was on the treatment, so we should continue it.

About 2 hours after stopping the treatment, we ran another blood gas. His levels were so high that the machine wouldn't even record it into the computer (pCO2 = 147, HCO3 = 61) so they sent the rest of the blood sample to the lab. His values were not quite as high, but still markedly elevated (pCO2 = 135). We have nothing to compare with the value from the actual lab, but looking at the values from the machine in the PICU, it looks like the albuterol treatment did not make changes in his carbon dioxide level overall; it keeps climbing. So, though we are going to continue the treatment by inhaler, we are not hopeful that it will bring his carbon dioxide level down.


We were hopeful that the carbon dioxide level in Mason's blood would be lower because the number that measures the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled into the ventilator had come down. What we learned today was quite disheartening. The fact that the 2 pieces of information are getting further apart is indicative of a worsening of his lung disease. It basically means that there is less lung working to push the air out, so it's getting measured inside the body (in his blood), but he is not exhaling it. We are, obviously, crushed with this news. Apparently, the worsening carbon dioxide levels in his blood are telling us that Mason's lungs are not getting better as we thought last week, and in fact, are much worse. We knew that the rising levels weren't good, but were hopeful that there was something we could do to treat it. Unfortunately, Mason's lungs are not responding to the treatment.

So, we are again going back in time and are at the point where we were 1 month ago. We will not be bringing Mason home. We will likely soon be saying good bye to our little boy. Until then, we will try to hope for a miracle, but more realistically will be praying for peace for the love of our lives and treasuring every second we get to spend with him.