Rough Day

Roscoe had a pretty rough day yesterday. He wasn't his happy self all day and his breathing and heart rate were both much higher than they usually are. Usually when he is sleeping, his breathing (white number) is 25-30 and his heart rate (green number) is 105-115 like this:

However yesterday, his numbers were much higher while he was sleeping (see the image below). When he was awake or even drowsy, his heart rate ranged from 170-190. The image below doesn't show it, but his breathing rate was often around 70+ breaths per minute.

His heart rate was 30-40 points higher than usual and his breathing was much shallower and more labored. Alisha pointed this out to the doctor and he ordered an x-ray to take a look at Roscoe's lungs. They saw more patchy areas than were on his last x-ray about a month ago, which indicated that his lung function was worse. The two possible explanations he gave were that his BPD (chronic lung disease) has gotten worse or that he has a respiratory infection (like pnemonia).

Alisha and I are convinced that Roscoe has a sickness or infection of some kind, due to the drastic change in his mood and vital signs. Surprisingly, his body temperatures have still been normal. The doctors will do another x-ray today to see if his lungs look any different after just one day, and if they do then that would indicate an infection.  If this is an infection, then he would be started on antibiotics and they would send a culture to the lab to identify the virus.

In addition to all of this going on for our little guy, they tried changing him to a BiPAP mask which didn't go so well. Click this link to see another blog post of him on that new mask and breathing support. It only lasted about 5-6 hours before he was back on the bubble CPAP.