return of the smack

Yesterday, my brother had the IV line taken out of his arm, permanently. Hooray! This was a joyous occasion for all because it was the cause of much getting-up-at-all-hours-of-the-night, itching and overal misery for everybody: He needed to flush the IV by squeezing a syringe of saline into the line, hook up the medicine bag, let it drip into his arm, flush the IV again and and repeat, four times a day for the last couple weeks. He was always cold, had a temperature that spiked to 103F pretty often, and couldn't keep any food down. He was so miserable, all he did was lie down and sort of watch tv.

After the first few days the first PICC line in his upper left arm began to burn whenever the antibiotics were going through. And then it started to leak. So they removed it and put in a similar IV called a midline that didn't go so far into his vein in the upper right arm, which ended up doing the same the same burning/leaking thing after a few days. The home health nurse redid that one a few times, but they finally got sick of all that drama two weeks into it and took the damn thing out*. Now he's on oral antibiotics and MUCH happier.

Now that the IV is gone, he's better able to keep food down, but the antibiotics make everything (even Portillos!) taste like plywood. His temperature is still hovering around 100F, but he's walking around the house and up to his old shenanigans. The power cord on his new XBox 360 is defective, so he's been on the horn with customer service, and I'm sure it won't be long until the parade of his local buddies starts coming in with boxes of pizza to cause a most welcome ruckus again.

However, the reason I know he feels better is that he has resumed openly mocking me. Last night's target: my new "day" schedule.

"Yep. Right about 9:30, your head starts drooping and your pressing my legs becomes extremely half-assed. Then at about 10 or so, you go downstairs and sit on the couch with mom for a bit and start to drool. Then at 10:30 you'll get up and go brush your teeth and come back up here, acting like you're all awake because you're rejuvenated. But that never lasts long and you start dozing again. By 11 you're full-out passed out, and that's the ballgame."

"Whatever, smartass."

*Knowing he went through all that gave me the courage to sign up to donate blood next week, if for anything, so he won't call me a wuss.