Air? Air!
So here are the updates:
1.) My little brother is home (has been for a bit) and his leg looks much better. (He had an extremely bad case of cellulitis, which he can be prone to due to poor circulation and having Factor V Leiden.
2.) They never did find out what was actually the source of the blood from his lungs. They took X-rays and did a CT and did more X-rays and a scope and changed up his medicines and so many things. And NOTHING showed an actual cause. Grr. I don't like that. He is home and ambulatory and feeling much better, but I don't like not knowing what made this happen. (Actually, the doctors don't, either. But after everything, they couldn't find anything actually wrong. So...?
If you are curious about gross stuff, you can get a bit of an idea of what he was coughing up here and here. (Warning: blood.)
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(These were taken in the ER and are only a smidge of everything that came up. I lost track after counting 14 oz. over the course of a week.)
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3.) The Pneumonia (which in all likelihood came from the hospital) Kicked. My. Ass.
I missed almost 3 more weeks of work due to this shit. Thankfully, my employers were super understanding (cutting labor right now, so I was lucky).
I haven't had an illness beat me down that hard in a long time.
When I discovered one day that I could breathe through my nose, it was like:
4.) I am back at work and hoping not to get sick again for a good long time. And thank you to all of you who were so kind and awesome and well-wishing for both my little brother and myself. I appreciate you all.