I wanted to send this email to you for some time now. Since the holidays are over, and my father isn’t in the hospital every week, thanks to Andreas, I now have time to send this message. I just wanted to let you all know how appreciative my family and I are for Andreas. My father has so many issues that truly does make him a “complex case”. My dad has been on death's door so many times I can’t even count anymore. There have been many, many times where my father has fallen through the cracks of the VA system. I even had to take a year off from work, because things were so messed up and complicated, that he would have passed away if I would not have taken that time. There were times where I was so frustrated and had such high anxiety that I would just cry (which is not something I do very often). I’ve had many sleepless nights and was afraid of losing my father purely from him slipping thru the cracks of the system. I contacted patient advocacy and they even tried to help with not a lot of success. I was constantly on the phone with doctors and/or nurses. We dealt with many issues like:
• 1 doctor/nurse saying one thing, and another medical provider saying another, which dangerously hindered his care.
• Medications were always changing, and one department didn’t really watch what the other department was giving him, and so there was a lot of critical mishaps with that.
• I was my father’s best advocate in contacting doctors and nurses and trying to get things done.

Even though things got slightly better during that time, there was still a lot of problems that caused my father to be rushed to the hospital on a regular basis. I’m telling you all of this, to let you know how grateful we are for Andreas. After many tears, prayers, arguments, hospital visits, etc., God heard my cry, and somehow, we were blessed with Andreas. I’m not sure how we got so lucky, but I just want to let you know how appreciative we are. If it was not for Andreas being so organized and getting things done, and advocating for dad himself, my father would have passed away a long time ago (and I truly mean that). He treats my father as if he were his father and you can feel that even through the phone. He treats us like we are his family and because of that, we consider him part of ours.

Andreas alone, has given us our faith back in the VA system. If I could forward this to the President of the United States, I would! Because Andreas has been so good to us, I wanted to get him a gift. Even though he appreciated the thought, he said it’s not allowed. Unfortunately, I don’t know how else to thank him for all he’s done, besides contact you. If there is anyone else, you can forward this to, will you please do that on behalf of our appreciation. There are so many good qualities about him that I’m not even sure I can come up with all of them. When he sees a need for something, that we aren’t even aware of, he brings it up, contacts who he needs to and gets it done. Every suggestion he’s ever made has helped my father’s condition immensely.

When the family isn’t being heard, or we are given conflicting information, Andreas jumps right in and waves a magic wand, and somehow gets the job done with pinpoint accuracy. He gets things done in 1 day that I’ve been trying to do for years. He keeps us on track and makes sure the proper care is given to my dad. Again, I’m not sure how we got Andreas but whoever made that decision, will you please tell them thank you and we are forever grateful. All of his efforts and help has given us extra time with my father. He is the patriarch of the family. He has eight children and many, many grandchildren spanning from the ages of 55 down to 6 years old. There is no amount of money or gifts that you can possibly give someone to thank them for that extra time that we’ve been given with dad…. the one that everyone looks up to and loves so much. With Andreas’ help, we’ve been able to keep dad around.

I will truly be forever grateful and thankful for Andreas. I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that you have an angel in your midst. Thanks again for listening and please let Andreas know how much we appreciate and actually love him for being the kind of person he is. In my opinion, he should be the example of how a complex case manager should be. I can’t imagine anyone being better than he is at his job. He is a great teacher and has a lot of patience. Hey- maybe a great teacher for future complex case advocates … Just a thought. Well as long as we get to keep him. Thank you, Andreas!