Eiche fam

Jessica and I have spent a good portion of the evening – now, the morning – on the phone. It seems that our understanding that Namine’s last dose of vancomycin was this evening at 8:00 is incorrect. But even that is not for sure.

Namine’s vanco was not given to us all in one bulk delivery. Instead, we only received a few days’ worth at a time. Because of this, we had assumed that we had been given only enough to get us to this evening’s 8:00 dose – what we understood from last Friday’s cardiology appointment as the last dose. But to my surprise, upon checking the fridge, there were four vancoballs left.

This is likely not a coincidence; Namine has received the vanco dose every six hours. Four times a day – four doses left. This got us thinking: did we get the final day wrong? Should Namine be getting the vanco until tomorrow night, not tonight?

The first thing to do, then, is to put a call into the VNA. And let me tell you, they were less than helpful. After being put on hold for a while, the nurse came back on the phone to tell me that she didn’t know what the orders were. So, she said, why don’t you just continue giving the dose?

Sure, why not.

Even better is the story on the nurse visit tomorrow. We had thought that the VNA nurse who’d taught us how to use the vancoballs was coming tomorrow to do one final blood draw and remove Namine’s PICC line. But surprise! Nope. There’s no plan at the VNA for any nurse visit, either.

So we called the special needs on-call line. They didn’t know what was going on either, but they recommended stopping the vanco (contrary to what the VNA said) since that had been the decision made by cardiology on Friday. Easy, right?

Wrong. Meanwhile, Jessica had put a call in to the on-call cardiology doc, who recommended continuing the dose. We have four more, and one more day won’t make much of a difference one way or another anyway.

But now we still have one more dilemma: when is Namine’s PICC line coming out?