The Roller Coaster Continues....

Sunday Mason continued to progress and drop more fluid. The doctors seemed optimistic that we would be able to run the first trial off of ECMO on Monday morning. Mason also opened both of his eyes and got a good look at his Mom and Dad for the first time.

This morning, Mason's chest x-ray looked very promising and he was almost back to his birth weight. These were the most important factors for the first ECMO trial to take place. An ECMO trial is when his ventilator settings are turned up while the life support cannulas are clamped down. Mason and the vent work together to maintain his "stats".

Here's where the roller coaster starts....Mason had a very successful first 2 and a half hours off of ECMO. His numbers did not change very much at all. Near the end of the trial (planned for 3 hours), he started to hyperventilate which increased the carbon dioxide in his blood gases. Based on this, the surgeons did not feel Mason was quite ready to completely come off of ECMO today. When the life support cannulas were unclamped, the ECMO circuit had blood clots (despite efforts to keep the system free of clots). They had to pump a lot of blood and fluid into the circuit, which went into Mason, however the flow out of the circuit had a blockage. All of this pressure built back up into his chest, causing his lungs to hemmorage.

Three emergency surgeries followed....one to readjust the cannula in his heart (on the ventricular side) to establish the circuit flow. Another to put an additional cannula directly into his heart (giving him now 2 cannulas in the heart). The third surgery was to remove the old cannulas from his neck because of the clots.

Right now Mason is stable and trying to recover from all of this. The surgeons feel that his lungs will recover from the fluid and hemmorage in 2 to 3 days. When his lungs have recovered, they will attempt another ECMO trial.