Glenn:

Isn't it amazing, I understood absolutely everything you wrote. That would not have been the case, let's say, a few months ago. I must be paying attention. I could print this out for Alan, but he would not understand it at all. He is not good with medicaleeese, if you get my drift.

I gather, that if this guy says "bring him in, with all the x-rays" and he looks at the x-rays, and if knows his stuff, he'll either tell Alan, "well there's 50/50 chance I can help you", or he'll say "wow, we've got a good chance here". or he'll say "sorry Alan, you don't have a big MORTON NEUROMA NERVE THING GOING ON, so you are not a candidate for this procedure.

Alan just told me "there has to be something, I mean cmon, this is 2007, there has to be something they can zap to get rid of the pain between my toes. I told him "this morning when you came home from work and went to sleep, we did the cotton ball thing between your toes, and you slept for 8 hours straight, right"?? He admitted I'm right.

So if he forgets to put the cotton balls on when he's awake, now whose fault is that??

Now on to another topic. ME, and my diabetes report from Cornell!!!
I've been doing really great with the Methyl B-12. Yesterday I went to Cornell, lost 4 more pounds, they lowered my Lantus to 26 down from 30. When I began Cornell 32 months ago, I was on 46 of the Lantus and 4 oral pills a day. The oral meds went first, then the dosing went down little by little of the Lantus. They also decreased my blood pressure meds because my pressure was 99 over 55. I said "whoa", and they said 'yup, we are lowering it, you are doing really good, although it's too good for our protocol. You see, they put me in the standardized group for the diabetics, and the intensive group for the high blood pressure people.

My body however reacted like an intensive was supposed to (in the diabetic protocol). They say "my god, why can't we put her in the intensive group?" and the other person said "you know we can't, she's in the standardized group. Now I have no idea why it makes such a difference that I went down in weight, went down 20 units of the Lantus, went off all oral meds, and they lowered my blood pressure meds. Isn't that a good thing??I asked them this. and they responded "oh yeah, it's great for you, but not so great for our protocol."

So next month I'm to be interviewed by an investigator of the ACCORD program. I asked the doctor "are they going to be mad at me or yell at me for breaking their protocol?" She laughed and said: "well, he's not going to be happy, he'll probably say "you broke our protocol, you were only supposed to get your A1c down to "such and such a number", and you exceeded what we expected"

I then asked the doctor "can they eject me from the ACCORD program, and she assured me "no, they can't do that".

So for some reason, unknown to me and known only to the man above, my numbers are better than they are supposed to be and I guess the investigator wants to find out why.

Oh, I told the doctor about my success with the Methyl B-12. She smiled and said "you are controlling your blood sugar, that is the most important reason why your PN is not flaring up".

So once again, poor old Methyl B is not getting any pats on the back.

And I have an interesting take on my PN. As I said, I have had no tingling, no buzzing and very very little burning since I've been on the Methyl B-12. Maybe once in a blue moon, if I cross my legs at the ankle, I may get a burn but that's about it.

Well, tonight my son called. No fight or anything. A two minute conversation. That's all it took for my body to react to hearing his voice. My feet started to burn. I can't begin to describe what happened to my body.
I couldn't believe it. I told Alan, "my feet are on fire" and he said "that's because you spoke to Frank".

When I calmed down and put the whole thing into perspective (about 1 hour), I composed myself and my feet are better. I guess you could call this a stress flare. What a shame. I can't even speak to my own son without my body reacting to him in this way. This is not the first time this has happened. I usually have spasms when I hang up the phone. This time it was the PN.

I am trying not to have my body react to him this way but heck, it's doing it all by itself. I'm usually very good at distancing myself from my son but tonight, well all it took was a two minute phone call.

One can only imagine if he lived at home!!!!!

mel