no-complaints gets challenging

my brother was admitted to the hospital today, two days before he was set to move all his stuff 918.30 miles away (that's 1478.463 km, X) and live in alabama for the coming school year.

last saturday his boys threw him a going away party: they rented a limo, went out for steak and got tipsy. i got a latenight phone call and he was most certainly not wasted, just sounding really tired and about to crash at a friend's house.

from sunday on, he had the chills but his forehead felt hot to the touch. "as warm as the pan you use to bake chapatis," according to my mother. however when his temperature was taken, it only registered at 98 degrees F (37.1 C). he also developed a really itchy rash all over that nothing seemed to cure. definitely not just a hangover.

after much arguing, we got him to see the general doctor this morning, who sent him to the emergency room, through which he was admitted to a hospital bed. a CAT scan and chest x-ray revealed no major problems aside from a small fluid buildup near the pacemaker, but we already knew that was an issue, and it wasn't enough to worry about. the dermatologist came by and cut out two pieces of his left arm muscles for biopsies to make sure the infection or whatever it could be hadn't spread there. he got five stitches. the doctor said if you could look past the outer skin, you'd see that the flesh underneath is as though he had a severe sunburn all over his body.

at this point, they suspect it's some kind of bad reaction to either the antibiotic they put him on to reduce the fluid after the pacemaker-checking/fluid-draining procedures or Advil. i'm highly doubting the latter because he's taken it for years. and while he hadn't been drinking alcohol while taking antibiotics, after 20 days of doses, 24 hours may not have been long enough for it to get out of his system.

the doctors have said that he's definitely not going back to school on friday and will need to rest for at least a week. whether that will be in hospital or at home remains to be seen. if they can't figure out what happened and remedy it soon enough, he may have to miss this semester of school and put off chance for graduation YET AGAIN.

the most upsetting factor of this is that like anyone with a medical condition, all the kid wants is some semblance of a normal life. how many other 23-year-old guys who want to throw back a few beers with buddies they won't see again until Christmas -- and are responsible about it (following the usual medical precautions and having a designated driver)-- have to risk potentially messing up six months of their lives?

getting through the day is hard enough as it is.


***UPDATE***
they released him from the hospital today (thursday) and though he's not warm to the touch anymore, he is extremely, severely red. i am not kidding. imagine the worst sunburn you have ever seen, like a purple red. i don't think i've ever seen a brown person turn that color in my life. (i don't know why lightskinned people dare risk it.) the doctor says that there is a chance it could be as bad as a second-degree burn and, as it peels, it could become infected. plus the poor kid is in a whole lot of pain for which they won't give him anything. the why? advil's interaction with caflex, even though he'd been off of the latter, it was still in his system.

poor thing.