Brushing the Gums

Roscoe had a rough day yesterday. It started off rather well with him being stable through the night, but then took a turn for the worse after something as simple as a diaper change. Roscoe desaturated and then had to be manually ventilated (ie: "bagged") for over an hour. The doctors put him back onto nitric oxide to dilate the blood vessels in his lungs. After some time on the nitric oxide, Roscoe's saturations returned to the high 90's.

Roscoe also vomited several times and was wincing even when on painkillers. The only seemingly relevant changes in the past day were increasing the calorie content of his milk, so we suspected that maybe the denser calories gave him stomach problems, which caused him to be discomforted, which then aggravated his pulmonary hypertension.

After vomiting, he seemed to return to his normal self, so we decided to wash out his mouth using a sponge:

The sponge has a mint flavor, which we found that Roscoe liked during his last few days at Kaiser. It is fun to see him playing with his tongue around the sponge as we scrub the inside of his mouth. You may have noticed in some of the pictures we posted today that a diaper was laying beneath his head. That was there in case any more vomiting occurred, which thankfully it didn't.