{"id":4,"date":"2023-08-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cota1.wpengine.com\/cotaformasonsjourney\/our-story\/"},"modified":"2023-08-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T00:00:00","slug":"our-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaformasonsjourney\/our-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mason and his twin sister, Melody, were born 6 weeks early, causing them to spend the first month of their life in the NICU. Mason was diagnosed with a rare life threatening disease called Biliary Atresia at 9 weeks old.&nbsp; He underwent an emergency surgery (the kasai procedure) in hopes of buying him more time before requiring a liver transplant. His first year of life was quite rough, fighting several bouts of colongitis, with multiple life-flights to the bay for treatment. At 4 years of age, he was then diagnosed with varices, portal hypertension, as well as an enlarged spleen. On August 7<sup>th<\/sup>, 2023, Mason had a Varices bleed, resulting in the need of an emergency banding. With his liver disease progressing, the decision to list Mason for a liver transplant was made by his medical team. Through it all, Mason has remained head strong and courageous,&nbsp;giving strength to his family, friends, and all who know and love him.<\/p>\n<p>The Children&#8217;s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) helps children and young adults who need a life-saving transplant by providing fundraising assistance and family support. COTA is the nation&rsquo;s only fundraising organization solely dedicated to raising life-saving dollars in honor of transplant-needy children and young adults. 100% of each contribution made to COTA in honor of our patients helps meet transplant-related expenses. COTA&rsquo;s services are free to our families, and gifts to COTA are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mason and his twin sister, Melody, were born 6 weeks early, causing them to spend the first month of their life in the NICU. Mason was diagnosed with a rare life threatening disease called Biliary Atresia at 9 weeks old.&nbsp; He underwent an emergency surgery (the kasai procedure) in hopes of buying him more time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaformasonsjourney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaformasonsjourney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaformasonsjourney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaformasonsjourney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaformasonsjourney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaformasonsjourney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cota.org\/cotaformasonsjourney\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}