It's waking up at 3 am to run across town.
It's scrubbing bloody mucous, bile, and diarrhea from the floor.
It's sacrificing sleep to massage an inflamed colon while he lays whimpering, in too much pain to sleep, with poop and blood matted to his legs, and the stink of vomit clinging gingerly to his greasy and unkempt hair.
It's losing days of what otherwise would've been very productive time, to hand feed antibiotics and probiotic yeast paste, as well as taking the time to painstakingly prepare his food because the doctor said anything raw would be too taxing on his overworked pancreas.
It's struggling with him and his inability to comprehend the clinical implications of his condition, his disgust of the taste of the medicine, and his frequent confusion and frustration, realizing that everything a textbook can teach you about pathology means absolutely nothing when you're actually treating somebody and trying to comfort them.
It's the realization, sometime in the early hours before dawn, that I was doing all of this for somebody who could never say thank you to me, and the complete acceptance of that fact, because, well, despite how dirty and difficult to manage he can be, the alternative is easier to do but much harder to live with.
Family is family, after all.