Are we having fun yet?

J was released from the hospital last night. You know what? I'm sick of referring to him as J. Who am I kidding -- pretty much everyone knows his name is John. John, John, John. He's a person, not an initial. No more J.

Anyway... they inserted his PICC yesterday. I've become an instant expert on PICCs in the past 24 hours -- gotta love the Internet. Peripherally Inserted Central Catheters go in the upper arm and the catheter threads up to the vein nearest the heart. John will shoot antibiotics into the PICC once a day. Basically, it looks like this, without getting too graphic:

He has a dressing over the insertion and can put a plastic sleeve over it (or plastic wrap) when he showers. He can drive, work, etc. No lifting, though, and no exertion. Once a week, he goes to the doctor to have the dressing changed, pick up another week's worth of drugs and basically check the thing to make sure all is OK.

I drove to Kaiser to pick him up. We stopped to buy him some groceries and then I got him home and settled in. It was 8:30, so he went straight to bed. I had brought an overnight bag, but he told me I should go on home, as he was OK, was going to sleep and then he'd be up early to leave for work.

So. Six weeks of this thing in his arm, and six weeks of antibiotics. The docs told him he should start feeling better and more energized by next week, but he's still quite sick and he's going to be fatigued easily for a while. They totally OKd his going back to work, though, as long as he just sits at a desk and keeps his hours shortened.

Life, of course, does not stop around us, just because John has been ill. Around the same time John went into the hospital, his 83-year-old mother had a seizure and she ended up in the hospital as well. She's home now, but she's disoriented and her motor skills aren't too great. Also, I spoke to my stepdad; my mother is falling a lot and he can't take her out anymore. They're trying to teach her how to use a walker, but she's resisting it.

I'm telling you, the fun never stops.

Not to sound harsh or unfeeling, but here's the deal. My mother has my stepfather and all her nurses and doctors at the facility. John's mother has three other kids, all local. Actually, one of his sisters gets a pass on helping out with Mom, because she has a business to run. And John gets a pass because, well, he almost died. So his other sister and his brother can take care of Mom. John needs to take care of himself now. And I need to focus on two people: Him and myself.

It was good to take him home. He's so thin and quite frail, but he's quite ambulatory and although his face looked exhausted, the color was a little healthier. He'd had a yellowish-gray cast to his face the past few weeks, and that's gone. Now it's just a matter of time. I'm sure he's privately mourning his beautiful sculpted body, but he'll get that back eventually.

How am I, people ask. Edgy. Emotional. Easily touched off. Earlier this week, a good friend told me that her beloved old cat is in his final days, and I wept as if he were my own cat. Dammit... just writing this is making me cry again. See what I mean?

Time for some fun and distractions. Next week, I'm playing. I need to. I feel like I'm never going to have sex again in this lifetime, but at least I can get spanked, thank goodness. And I need to laugh. Maybe I should stop watching Six Feet Under for a while and watch Marx Brothers movies instead. And look at the bright side: No more election ads every two seconds! The clocks go back this weekend, so I get another whole hour of precious soothing darkness! (Yes, I'm weird. What else is new.)

Onward. Thanks again for the comments, the emails, the calls, everything. I love my friends. :-)

EDIT: On a funny note -- I was looking at my Keyword phrases (what people have used to find my blog) and saw this:

"I have the flu" fever

WTF? I had to laugh -- can you imagine the poor schnook out there, trying to research his flu symptoms and he gets linked to a spanking blog? How perverse is that?