Like the Back of a VCR

Roscoe is starting to look like the back of a VCR with all of the wires running out of him. Yesterday we got to the hospital a little later than usual. He received a new PICC line in his right arm (which I believe was his 4th) which will be a long-term IV which runs a tube through his artery and near to his heart. If you'd like to see what Alisha's PICC line looked like, click here to see what was outside her arm and here to see the rest of the tube that ran through her veins. The PICC line will be used to deliver Roscoes sedative and painkiller. He also got an arterial IV in his left arm (which was a surprise to us) which they will use to draw blood. This will hopefully prevent further needle pokes and allow his other veins to heal.

With these two new IVs, Roscoe has a total of 3 IVs again (foot, left arm, right arm) along with sensors for CO2, oxygenation, heart rate, breathing rate, and another sensor to measure the fluid content in his system. This is what his room looks like as a whole:

In the upper left is the screen that displays his heart rate (green), blood pressure (red), fluid content (white), breathing rate (yellow) and oxygenation (blue):

Below that screen on a small shelf is another machine which monitors his CO2 levels through a sensor attached to his leg. They measure his CO2 because higher levels of CO2 will cause Roscoe's blood vessels to constrict which will increase his blood pressure:

To the right of the screen is a small green screen that controls his continuous feeding (currently at 27mL per hour). Below the screen are two separate pumps that run fluid through his unused IVs to keep them flushed to prevent clogging:

Below Roscoe's bed is a small machine that was injecting potassium into his system to replace any that he lost due to the diuretics he's been taking this past week to keep him from building up fluid in his lungs while he's on nitric oxide. 

To the right of Roscoe's bed is the machine that supplies his oxygen at a specified breathing rate and pressure. The top line on the chart you can see a distinction between the breaths that Roscoe is making (smaller) and the breaths that the machine is making (larger):

The output of that machine gets mixed with nitric oxide by another machine further to the right. For those who've read this far, despite the lack of cute baby pictures, you'll be excited to learn that last night his nitric oxide was at 15ppm and Roscoe wasn't stable enough to be weaned to 10ppm. That's exciting because tonight when we left, he was extremely stable at a level of 7ppm:

Tomorrow we hope to have lots of cute baby pictures (and maybe some videos) to share which will show our little man in his new larger crib. He continues to look better each day, which is very encouraging to us. We are confident that God is watching over Roscoe and giving him this improvement in direct response to the prayers all of you are making.