As soon as I saw Dr. Smith I immediately thought of Jonathan Harris (oh the pain , the pain). Love your name. Loved Lost in Space.

Now back to massages.

The reason I seem to know what I'm doing (and I would NEVER tell anyone else to do this) is because I began doing this years ago even before he saw his chiropractic neurologist. One day while my husband was there for an appointment, I had to show the doctor exactly what I did. The doctor looked at me, looked at Alan and said "wow, she seems to know what she is doing".

What do I do?

I take my elbow, I put it on his lower back and I press all the way up. Kind of like a chiropractic adjustment. Sometimes I do this and sometimes I just give him a regular old massage. Shoulders, back, upper and lower, calves (He loves this) but I'm careful because I know that you can get blood clots from massaging calves so I don't do it hard nor do I do it all the time. Just once in a while on the calves. But actually most of my massage is his lower back.

If you have ever seen one of those expensive massage chairs at the malls or Brookstone, sit in it and you'll have the same reaction as my husband. He goes absolutely bonkers. If we won the lottery tomorrow, the day after he would be buying that chair. When we go to the Neuropathy support group meetings once a month, we always get to NYC two hours earlier. First we go to Brookstone, and he tries all their massage chairs and their lumbar this and lumbar that. He LOVES this. I would NEVER do that to my back. When I go for a pedicure, they always want to turn on this massage roller thing that goes up and down the back. NOT FOR ME. I always say thank you. I don't like anything going up and down my back. My husband is completely different than I am.

I also do rolfing on his upper back. Very hard to do. I saw it on Dr. Oz and began doing it to Alan once in a while but hey, you have to have the hands of an iron worker and I don't. So basically it's my elbow on his lower back, and I take the other hand and push into his back. Then I go up his back continuing with the elbow. Been doing this for YEARS. It's the only thing that helps his discomfort (for want of a better word).

Also, about this Slender Shaper thing. I said to Alan. "I know you and I know the kind of pain you have been in for 18 years and if you were in that kind of pain right now, you'd buy this in two minutes flat". He said "you're absolutely right. My feet are completely numb, my nerves on dead and yeah, I have pain, but not like two years ago. If I had seen this thing two years ago, I would have jumped at it."

It's not his motor nerves because he walks fine. It's the sensory nerves. And he's not diabetic. And it's still idiopathic.

Anyway, hopefully someone will post and say "Melody, tell Alan to buy this gizmo".

lol
Melody