Rrae -

Hi. Thank you for posting. Since speaking with Bobber Tues. afternoon/evening, I've been trying to find some information on a Wal-Mart Pharmacy site that he wanted me to share with you, but I can't come up with it.

So to begin on a purely practical note, Wal-Mart has a couple of programs that have made quite a difference for Bobber. First, except for narcotics, etc. (Schedule II drugs) Wal-Mart allows people to fill only that portion of a prescription they wanted to pay for right now, keeping the balance on reserve for filling at a later date. So if a month's supply is 30 pills, you could buy it a week at a time over the while month - at the same price per dose that you would normally pay - think of them as mini-refills on a single monthly refill, while at the same time you have of course so many monthly refills as the prescription allows.

More significantly, and here's where I could really use a good link, they have a program where if you believe that you will be using a lot of a certain medicine over time, you can sign up to "purchase" a wholesale quantity of the drug - say a 1,000 capsule bottle at the "wholesale rate," while only paying for and taking as much of the medicine you need at one time. According to Bobber, the best part of this is that you're not obligated to complete the purchase of the "wholesale quantity." Not sure if this is true in any case or if it has restrictions, such as giving you an out when your doctor switches your medications. However, Bobber said that it was his understanding that you could walk freely away from a bulk "purchase" for ANY reason whatsoever and that this is a nationwide company policy.

Again, if anyone could fill in the blanks for me it would be greatly appreciated.

Now as to Bobber himself, he sounds great, if a little frustrated by the delays. He was in the hospital for a few days of tests and observations, but the doctors apparently want to have the inflammation in his back subside a little more with oral meds, before they simultaneously re-install (this time correctly) a cathedra to continuously irrigate the nerves coming out of the spine with a mixture of meds while simultaneously infusing ketamine through an iv in his arm. While he understands that the nerves coming out of his spinal column may not be in a position to withstand the threading of a second cathedra for a few weeks, he's doing what he can to get one or more blocks in the interim, to encourage the swelling to go down (presumably using a steroid of some kind), while at the same time dosing the area with a local anesthetic, in order to minimize whatever risk of "spread" there might be in the few weeks it will take before the nerves can withstand any sort of an invasive procedure. Complicating things, of course, is the 5 hour commute Rrae spoke of.

At least for now, the important thing is that he has a good relationship with the medical school pain specialist, who clearly "gets" what's going on with him and it appears will do what's required to make the full resources if his institution available for Bobber's use. It's as though he's now one of a handful of state-wide high profile pain cases. And the circumstances certainly require no less

Mike