Okay so, if you've watched Knives Out, the scene where Marta's giving Harlan his medicine, she's not giving him the shots directly but putting them through a tube thing around his arm. What is that? How does it work? Can/ should I give my recovering from big injuries blorbo one of those?
I have seen Knives Out!
In fact, I did a whole post about it you can read here.
The thing in Harlan's arm was called a PICC, or Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter.
See, unlike in TV and most movies, when someone needs a medication given in a vein (called an intravenous medication), we don't just stick a needle into a vein- it has to go through some type of IV catheter.
An IV catheter (AKA a "peripheral venous catheter") is a thin plastic tube that goes through the skin and into a vein. The part sticking out of the skin can attach to a syringe to "push" medication into a vein, or be hooked up to a set of tubing and a bag of fluids or medication that has to go into the person over time.
The kind of these you'd get in a typical hospital setting only last about 7 days max, though. So if you need an IV for longer periods (like, say, you need IV antibiotics or chemotherapy infusions over weeks or months), or you need medications that are really irritating to a vein (like total parenteral nutrition or a medication to raise blood pressure), or you have such bad veins that no one can put an IV in you and you're critically ill, you need what is called a central line instead.
There are several types of central lines. The kind Harlan has is a PICC- meaning a central line that is inserted into a peripheral part of the body (usually the upper arm) and goes into a really deep vein. The catheter (thin plastic tube) is much longer than a typical IV catheter, and actually goes all the way to the heart. It is then secured to the skin by stitches and a plastic film that is changed every 5 days or so.
If your blorbo is in an ICU and can't keep his blood pressure up, or needs IV antibiotics to go home on, he might get a PICC or other central line. They do everything a regular IV does, plus they can take more irritating medications that would ruin peripheral IV catheters.
