The Evolution of Atlas: A Breeding (and Chat) Thread

[1muttsfan]

Everyone is an expert. Especially now in the new Internet world, where information and misinformation are equally available. Obviously, just like many medical professionals, he is insulated from broader knowledge and does not know it. If you are a hammer, everything is a nail.

Robin, antihistamines only take the edge off my itching. I use Pramasoothe spray (the one without cortisone) and it works amazingly well to reduce the itching. It is a veterinary product, and there are other similar sprays (active ingredient is Pramoxine).

 

[speckledhen]

Everyone is an expert. Especially now in the new Internet world, where information and misinformation are equally available. Obviously, just like many medical professionals, he is insulated from broader knowledge and does not know it. If you are a hammer, everything is a nail.

Robin, antihistamines only take the edge off my itching. I use Pramasoothe spray (the one without cortisone) and it works amazingly well to reduce the itching. It is a veterinary product, and there are other similar sprays (active ingredient is Pramoxine).

Oh, yeah, the pain reliever in triple antibiotic ointments is usually Pramoxine.

Yeah, everyone is an expert. Do it my way, no my way, no, this is the right way...all the while, they don't have the slightest clue what this pain is like for him.

 

[Cryss]

Jill is on Day 16 with her 2 remaining eggs, full of chick.

My poor husband. He is going through the same crap he always has to go through when he has new "professionals" involved in trying to get relief for his back issues. The VA sent him to physical therapy twice a week, and this time, he acquiesced, knowing what would happen. He's gone twice. It seems the ultra-skeletal PT guy, the vegan who looks sickly, thinks his job is to make my husband lose weight, that his back issues are due to his weight gain, when in fact, his weight gain is the result of his severe back pain and inability to be active as he wants to be.
So after two sessions, he can barely walk and is in more pain. His back is worse. Exercise DOES NOTHING to fix missing discs, bone rubbing against bone or pinched nerves. The PT guy doesn't want him to allow the surgeon to treat him, thinking his magical exercise routines (elliptical, etc) will fix his back issues because he'll lose weight. ALL HE WANTS IS PAIN RELIEF w/o resorting to being in a stupor from pain drugs! Geez. No, PT is a JOKE for something that is not muscle related! WTH is wrong with these people?
The PT guy seems to think we eat badly. NO, we eat fresh food. No, we don't forgo dairy products, free range eggs or all meats, but we rarely eat red meat in the first place. We rarely ever eat out, hardly ever eat fast food, I don't bake goodies except maybe once a year. We grow a lot of our own vegetables and can them ourselves. But, he's pushing that Mediterranean Diet thing that made him a sickly-looking guy, no animal products. Loaf bread has not been in the house for a year, but when it was, it was real whole grain bread.

Have you looked into medical marijuana? As a (retired) nurse I have been won over on it's validity. This coming from a mother who sent her 18 year old son packing with a duffle bag out the door walking to find somewhere else to live all because he had a joint in the house. I was a hard liner against cannabis. I now have my 48 year old daughter very ill with excruciating pain. Her doctor prescribed medical marijuana. She has found that CBD, when combined with THC gives her enough relief she can get out of bed and function as well as possible. No opioids. Occasional tylenol or something like that. I watched her transform from a bedbound shell to a relaxed and basically pain free woman. She will never be who she was, but she is no longer wracked with pain.

 

[speckledhen]

Have you looked into medical marijuana? As a (retired) nurse I have been won over on it's validity. This coming from a mother who sent her 18 year old son packing with a duffle bag out the door walking to find somewhere else to live all because he had a joint in the house. I was a hard liner against cannabis. I now have my 48 year old daughter very ill with excruciating pain. Her doctor prescribed medical marijuana. She has found that CBD, when combined with THC gives her enough relief she can get out of bed and function as well as possible. No opioids. Occasional tylenol or something like that. I watched her transform from a bedbound shell to a relaxed and basically pain free woman. She will never be who she was, but she is no longer wracked with pain.

We are not on that bandwagon. Definitely, we don't believe in smoking anything. Lungs were not meant to inhale smoke of any kind. And, in my opinion, CBD oil is not the cure-all it is purported to be. I'm glad your daughter is better, but we are not even at the point where all this is even legal in all states anyway. Seems like there is always a new cure-all that later on is found to be not such a cure after all. He wants zero drugs. He wants pain gone without drugs. This is just another drug, something to take. If he can get a nerve block or something like that, it would be better than ingesting drugs of which we don't know the full, long-term side-effects. Personally, I think this is just making someone rich.

 

[getaclue]

I know it's awful, but he has to go X amount of times, before the insurance company will move on to the surgery option. Let me find out from Dd #2 how many times she had to go before she was able to proceed to get her back surgery. In her case, she got a good PT, that even put in his reports that the PT was not going to improve her condition. The thing is, it's required by the insurance companies, before he can move on to other options.

Nice to know that slender people can't get back problems. It will be wonderful when the rest of the medical community realizes they were wrong, and catch up with the PT's expert knowledge about back problems. Maybe someday he'll wake up, and realize broccoli doesn't fix everything.

After Tom gets past the PT, and has been treated for his back condition, I hope he files a complaint with the insurance company about this guy.

 

[speckledhen]

Haha, it's the VA sending him to PT. They are operating on outdated medical knowledge. They are certainly operating on outdated nutritional data! One egg yolk per week to keep cholesterol in check? My husband eats 4 free range eggs daily for breakfast and his readings are normal. Low fat? Low fat is not natural. Low fat keeps this entire country obese. You cannot absorb calcium in dairy without the fat. How about WHOLE FOODS, unprocessed? We probably eat more of those than 90% of the average American. We grow them using only chicken poop fertilizer from our free range chickens. We made this garden soil from them. We know what's in it. So, we're dealing with an old, outdated system in many ways that needs revamping and new information.

***Adding that I looked at pics of him when we first moved here. His back was still bad, but not this bad. He was at least 50 lb lighter then. I mean, we built several buildings all by ourselves. Now, he can barely walk to the barn and back.

 

[getaclue]

It's not just the VA. ALL insurance companies (yes the VA falls under that heading too) require a certain amount of PT, before they will consider other options. Like I said, my daughter was in an auto accident. She didn't just sustain a sprain. Time was not on her side, because she was leaking spinal fluid from the injury. She was in horrible pain, numb in her fingers and one arm, and the chance of permanent paralysis increasing as time went on.

She would be in tears after her PT sessions, and for a couple days afterward. BUT it's the only way they will let a patient move on to get the treatment they really need. Like I said, her PT even said the PT was not going do help anything in her situation. Even with that, she still had to meed the PT requirement, before she could get the treatment she really needed. She finally did get her surgery. She had the Artificial Disc Replacement, and when they got the damaged disc out, they were able to stop the spinal fluid leak too.

 

[speckledhen]

We'll see. They're just wasting time and torturing my husband. I don't believe that the VA will spring for disc replacement. Remember, this is an archaic system, not the latest and greatest. They are operating on old medical knowledge. What a regular insurance company might do, the VA won't. And it's almost as bad with our military pay healthcare system, TriCare. They refused to pay for Prolia shots for my osteopenia and I cannot take Fosamax for my bone loss, makes me sick. So, I am doing nothing except calcium and D3.

 

[getaclue]

I understand checks and balances within the medical community, but there should be certain exceptions built into their criteria too, but there aren't.

 

[getaclue]

Find out how much the shots cost out of pocket. My daughter was needing a medication, I forgot what it was, and it was not covered under her plan. I asked the pharmacist how much it cost, and the entire prescription was about $20.00. Find out what the out of pocket cost is.

Call the manufacturer of Prolia. Sometimes, they have things in place that they can't let people know about, unless they're denied coverage for it, or cancel due to not being able to afford the high cost.

It was that way with my Ibrance. When they first set me up, and she said my co-pay was over $3,000.00 a month, I about fainted. I told her to cancel, since there was NO WAY I could afford that. She told me to stay on the phone. In a minute she returned, and asked me a few questions, then told me I qualified for a program that would pick up most, if not all of the co-pay. She explained the most I would pay out of pocket was $5.00. She submitted my info, and I don't pay any co-pay.

When there are multiple manufacturers of a similar medication with the same active ingredient(s), but varying inert ingredients, each of the insurance companies will negotiate a deal with one of them. Often times, when a person is an exception, and can't tolerate that particular brand of medication due to one of the inert ingredients, they act like that's just too bad, and nothing can be done. Sometimes it's worth the phone call, and things can be worked out nicely.

BTW, see if Reclast is an option.