Atlas Needs Your Support and Prayers

Tricia Mahr & Jason Raether recently got married in August of 2024. They were expecting their precious little addition to their little family due in February 2025.

On Monday, October 28th, at 24 weeks pregnant, Tricia went to work as she normally would. She wasn’t feeling quite right; she felt a lot of heaviness and pressure. She decided to call her OBGYN’s office just to let them know how she was feeling and to see if it was normal or if she should go in to be checked out. After she called, she decided to walk around a bit to see if that would help. Her water suddenly broke. In a panic, she made her way to a fellow co-worker who acted quickly and drove her down to HSHS St. Vincent Hospital in Green Bay. Tricia was immediately admitted, and several efforts were made to attempt to stop labor and the bleeding until the baby’s heart rate could not be found and was dropping fast. The team acted quickly, and Tricia was wheeled directly to the OR for an emergency C-section. Baby Atlas was born at 12:08 pm. After birth, Atlas was in rough shape and needed a lot of support and blood products. A few days after birth, nurses noticed that he was beginning to develop lesions on his back and a few other locations on his body. Doctors were stumped and didn’t know what was causing them. After further testing, it was discovered Atlas had a fungal infection called Aspergillus. It’s a very challenging fungal infection to get rid of. The only way to get rid of the lesions on his skin and to get them to stop spreading was to remove them. Atlas went through a very painful procedure to have the lesions removed from his skin. He has also been on two different fungal antibiotics to help fight the infection. They had suspicion that there had to be a fungal ball somewhere in his body that caused those lesions to present themselves. So, they did several ultrasounds to see if they could find anything, but nothing showed up. They did an echocardiogram of his heart, and that came back with some very heavy and unfortunate news. Atlas had a large fungal ball in his heart. Tricia and Jason were devastated by the news and were basically told that they needed to pray for a miracle, and if Atlas could make it to 36 weeks and meet qualifications, they would evaluate if he could get open-heart surgery to remove the fungal ball from his heart. Atlas continues to fight and battle all the challenges that a 24-weeker faces, plus having a serious fungal infection. The doctors and nurses are constantly amazed at how far he has come and continues to fight on! The fungal ball has decreased in size since that first echocardiogram; he has them bi-weekly. The NICU team that is currently taking care of Atlas has been in constant contact with doctors at UW Madison Hospital (American Family Children’s Hospital) regarding his infection and are constantly giving their tips and advice. It has now officially reached that point where Atlas is at the 36-week mark, and conversations and planning have begun to discuss when Atlas will be transferred to American Family Children’s Hospital NICU in Madison.

In turn, the family will have to travel to and from Madison on a regular basis (6-hour trip total), making this very difficult for them to handle the amount of gas needed, as well as loss of work and additional healthcare bills. I am hoping to help ease some of their stress along this journey of Atlas going and growing to continue to be a strong boy with a strong name!

Please consider helping this wonderful family in this time of need.

❤️ Thank You!