We had a good meeting. They showed a 90 minute movie about pain management. It was made by doctors from the State of Michigan. The whole thing was in lecture format and the doctor explained ALL about peripheral neuropathy and the various treatment methods (I'm sure we ALL know what those are). At the end of the movie, a person asked the doctor "What about Stem Cell Research". The doctor was NOT optimistic about this. She just said "there is much controversy on Stem Cell Research".

Now we all know about the various opiates, and neurontin and lyrica's and all the pain meds.

But I DID learn something new last night.

They have recently come out with lidocaine ointment. One of the guys at the meeting told us about it. Since Alan had a doctor appointment this morning, he asked his doctor, and sure enough he then got the prescription, went to the pharmacy and came home with a little tub of lidocaine ointment. 5 percent.

It looks like vaseline but smell likes spearmint. He used it this afternoon and right now it's 10:22 p.m. and I asked him "how is it working?" and he just said "so far so good".

He also has this cream called Healthifeet which he thought initially did not work, but for a few days, did work a bit.

I wonder if Alan can make his own compound, by taking a bit of the lidocaine ointment, a bit of the healthifeet cream, blending together and putting on his feet.

Might he do that? The healthifeet is supposed to encourage blood flow to the feet. Alan doesn't have a problem with blood flow, he just has zips and zaps between the toes. The healthifeet seems to make this just a wee bit better.

So why not combine the two???

Any ideas?

Melody