Healing and other Updates

 

Sorry to leave everyone waiting for an update on Mason's recovery, life has been incredibly crazy.  Today Mason is 3 weeks and 1 day out from his last surgery.  He spent most of the last 3 weeks laying around as much as we could convince him to.  Mason has been officially cleared to sit and resume most of his normal activities.  He is healing! 

It is a slow process and one that won't be finished for a month or more yet.  His body has to knit together so many layers and with an active little boy who can't feel his surgery site it's interesting.  Here is a picture of the nice, scabby incision this morning.  We are thrilled to have scabs still - they protect the fragile, healing tissue.  It certainly is not pretty, but it is closed.  The big goal now is to keep it closed!

In other medical arenas Mason has an appointment with his developmental ophthalmologist at the end of the month to see if we can pinpoint the cause for his crossed left eye.  For Mason it could be a few things:

• Shunt related - which we already ruled out with an MRI.  The crossing eye is on the opposite side of his shunt, in case you were wondering.
• Vision problem - from weak muscles to just about a thousand other things that could be addressed with eye patching, glasses, or surgery. Who knows?
• His tethered spinal cord - We already know his cord is tethered, we can't do surgery on it until his bottom finishes healing.  The sedated MRI for updated spinal and brain pictures is scheduled for mid-March and as long as he has healed well I suspect the detethering of the spinal cord will quickly follow.  That is a whole new level of scary.  Messing with someone's spinal cord is serious business and can cause more damage.  I'm just trying to leave that in God's hands because I know it's coming and there's nothing I can do about it.

Mason's leg and hip contractures are the same or worse, depending on which you are talking about.  It is not good and nothing we're doing helps.  We're praying the detethering will help, that is what the doctors hope. 

This Saturday Mason turns two years old.  I'll be sharing my thoughts about this whole journey on his birthday.  It is a bit emotional to think back over the last two years.  If you've been with us through it all I'm more grateful than I can say.  For now I'm off to enjoy my children!