--that's some list. Didn't notice any neuropathy on it, though.

Awful lot of metastatic prostate cancer there. Reminds me to get my PSA checked on a regular basis.

David, I was not aware about Jesse Helms; thanks for pointing that out. (If I had known while he was still in office, you can bet I would've been e-mailing him, although the difference between his politics and my politics is on the order of alpha and omega . . .).

It got me thinking--there are a lot of conditions under the umbrella of neuropathy, including traumatic ones, such as radiculopathies (e.g., "pinched nerves") that athletes experience--I'm wondering if there are any retired NFL'ers out there with chronic radiculopathy. (This is particularly interesting to me lately, as my whole torn muscle in the shoulder thing continues to drag on, and I am still experiencing that right thumb/forefinger/forearm numbness/tingling, suggestive of a C6/C7 nerve root compression, and there was that note, on my last cervical MRI, of neural foramen narrowing there--right now the symptoms are annoying, not debilitating, but I'm thinking something more aggressive than PT, such as traction, may now be called for . . .)

I've also been wondering if the celiac/gluten sensitivity angle is the one to go with. Celiac has been gaining increasing publicity in the last decade, thanks in no small part to boards such as these and the work of the people on them--Cara and Al and Anne and Mrs. D and many others--and the neurological gluten research of Drs. Hadjivassiliou/Fine/Latov/Chin etc. Again, though, as Kmeb brings up, the neuropathy in these cases is still often thought of as secondary to something else. How do we get people to see neuropathy as a debilitating syndrome in its own right?