Eiche fam

Man plans and God laughs.
— Yiddish Proverb

After text messages, phone calls, and more phone calls, we finally know what’s going on. Maybe.

Last night, before I ended up calling the VNA, I had sent a text message to the nurse who’d taught us how to use the vancoballs and such. She was assigned to Namine’s case, and we had several numbers – not only her number, but also the main and after-hours numbers for the VNA (which I ended up calling after not getting a response from the nurse).

So anyway, I didn’t get a response until this morning.

Hi Paul. I don’t have orders yet for the line to be discontinued and they wanted to remove it at Childrens hospital. I can draw blood today if needed. I will call and let u know the plan.

The nurse never called us, but the VNA office did. They wanted to know how Namine’s appointment went yesterday (she didn’t have one) so they could send us more vancoballs. Sometimes, you just want to reach through the phone and choke someone.

So now, hopefully, we have things cleared up with the VNA. Namine is done with her vancomycin treatment. She was supposed to be done yesterday, but after tonight’s 8:00 we will have no more, so she really will be done (that is, unless the VNA decides to deliver more anyway). At any rate, the VNA nurse won’t remove Namine’s PICC line. We have to bring her into the hospital, which we found out last night. From here on we’d have to talk to cardiology.

Jessica talked to Mike, a cardiology PA who’s followed Namine since she was a baby. He, in turn, talked to Dr. Mitchell, Namine’s cardiac surgeon (who performed not only Namine’s three heart surgeries – the modified Norwood, Glen, and fenestrated Fontan – but also the debreeding and cleaning of her open chest incision). Originally, the plan according to cardiology was to have Namine come in this afternoon for the PICC removal. But Dr. Mitchell recommended continuing to use the remaining vancoballs – now with only two remaining – and to have the PICC removed tomorrow morning.

Now that we have a finalized plan in place, I hope it doesn’t change again.