Very good comment Brian:

Lailavia: The only good doctor is a doctor who, besides listening to you and paying attention to your symptoms, works WITH you, respect you, and doesn't brush you off because he can no longer help you. And if a doctor can no longer help you, I think he should recommend someone who can help you.

There are plenty of good doctors out there. Plenty. The thing is to locate them, get an appointment, and do what he says to do. If he says to lose weight, then we lose weight, if he says to exercise, (that it will be beneficial), then we don't say, with a groan "oh, I'm too old to exercise". If Alan said that, believe me, he wouldnt' be where he is today, 75 lbs lighter and development some muscles. If Alan had not gotten that foot ulcer, he'd still be at the gym 3 times a week working out like Rocky Balboa. So he got sidetracked. Now that he has the shoe, once the ulcer heals, you'd better believe that he'll do all he can do to fight this neuropathy.

In his words "when I exercise, go to the gym 3 times a week, I have no pain".

I find that absolutely remarkable coming from a man who used to weight 275 lbs and wore a fentanyl patch. And of course I know that many people with various degrees and various kinds of neuropathies cannot go to the gym. Each person is different with their various diagnoses. Sometimes, the only thing a person can do is find the right med that works for them.

But Alan was a very lucky man. He found Dr. Theirl and he LISTENED. He listened to Dr. Theirl talk about the whole body, the way it works, the nerves, the muscles, how important exercise is. So when Alan used to have a bad day (with his ulcer), we would lie on the bed and just do simple stretching exercise. I mean, any form of movement is good for him.

He is (as a norm), a couch potato. He can't go for walks because he has to keep the pressure off of his foot. I wonder though, now that he has the oft loading shoe, can he go for simple walks, like 5 blocks or so??? He forgot to ask his podiatrist. It's much easier to sit in a chair and watch tv, then it is to get on a bike and pedal away. I understand this. It's all in the motivation.

As he puts it, "when you have a stress test, and you are told you have a blockage, and you have an angiogram, and then you have angioplasty, and you have to take plavix, aspirin and metoprolol for the rest of your life, and the doctor says "no salt, exercise", well that did it for Alan. He listened, he did what he was told was necessary, and guess what??? It actually helped his neuropathy!! I wouldn't have believed that this is the same man who laid on the bed 4 years ago screaming in such pain that I had to slap another fentanyl pain patch on him (he already was on a 50 and we had a box of 25's in the house). I didn't know what to do. I took another patch, (didn't give a second thought because he was screaming his head off, because I had inadvertently put capsaicin creme on his toes and he had a scratch and we didn't know it). Well, forget about it!!! He went nuts. It was 2 a.m. and he was screaming, and there I was with cold packs and cold towels, washing off the capsaicin and nothing worked. All I could think of was getting another patch. I did and in 2 seconds he just said 'Whoa". I will never forget that night. A stupid 25 patch, added to the 50, and his pain went from a 10 to a 0. I was never so frightened. Then we found out that if you have a scratch (and his feet are numb, so he didn't know he had a scratch), that the capsaicin is hot pepper stuff, and it burned him. It really really burned him. We never went near that stuff again. And from that night on, he wore socks to bed so his nails on one foot wouldn't scratch the other foot.

He then went to blue stuff and it worked for a while (funny though, I have a cousin with severe neuropathy from a spinal tumor, and she put blue stuff and it burned her like crazy. She won't go near it. How the hell can blue stuff burn you?? Never understood that. She also tried Bio-freeze and it burned her too. Wow, all the various ways neuropathy reacts to the cremes

Anyway, sorry for the long post

The best of luck in finding the right doctor!!!

Melody