The Next Chapter

Roscoe had more fluctuations today, but ended on a good note. His belly had grown in circumference from 32cm to 40cm, due to retaining fluid and waste. Today a few doses of a diuretic (called lasix) helped him to kick start his digestion and get things moving again. By the end of the day, his waist was down to 36cm. Roscoe has taken this diuretic before to get rid of excess fluid. One time Alisha came home and said "They are saying that he needs lasix" and I thought she was talking about corrective eye surgery.

The big news from today is that Roscoe will be headed back to UCSF. After his oxygen requirements stayed high and they were unable to wean him from the nitric oxide, we were stuck. Kaiser needed his oxygen requirements to be lower to warrant weaning the nitric oxide, but the nitric oxide was keeping his pulmonary edema active which prevented his lungs from functioning properly. They decided it would be best to send him back to UCSF where more extensive treatment options are available (including a stent for his pulmonary vein stenosis). If lots of these terms are confusing, the background of his breathing issues is explained in this blog post.

Tonight as I write this, a helicopter is landing in Roseville from UCSF. The medical team will take an ambulance from the helicopter to Kaiser and load up Roscoe (which will look like this). Then they will take the ambulance back to the helicopter, transfer him to the helicopter, and then fly him to UCSF. He's living quite the full life at his young age, since I've never ridden in a helicopter myself. Alisha and I will be driving down and will hopefully arrive within an hour after the helicopter lands.

Once Roscoe is at UCSF, they'll analyze him to get their own take on the situation, so we hope that won't be to stressful on him. After their analysis is done, the experts at UCSF will probably do a cardiac catheterization again to explore the extent of his chronic lung disease, pulmonary vein stenosis, and the resulting pulmonary hypertension. We're loading up the car now and will hopefully post more details as we get them tomorrow at UCSF.