outtahere and backagain

[Guest guest]

Hello everybody. We're home from Rochester, and glad to be in Nebraska again.

Minnesota is nice, Rochester is nice, home is home. We lived 2 weeks in a motel

room, mostly eating out of an ice chest and washing dishes in a teensy lavatory,

but did just fine.

Fascinating results--my husband (who was the Mayo

outpatient-for-multiple-evaluations) also has RLS! He has been treated for

" neuropathy " by surgery (cervical fusion and lumbar laminectomy), many, many

drugs, depression, tension, stress, etc.

Of course, you know, the last 3 were true.

The week prior to our trip, I had received the packet from the RLS Foundation

(thank YOU, Cindy), but hadn't had a chance to open it. I began to read in the

motel room, and became more and more suspicious of Bob's real problem as I read.

Actually, I had begun to wonder from reading the rls support posts. The first

physician he saw (neurologist) bruskly informed him that he had " an aggressive

form of RLS and should be on Sinemet. Bob had worked for a year to get off

Sinemet.

After he had a chance to read the RLS material himself, he went back to the

neurologist, armed with information & questions. What a difference it made in

the doctor's attitude. He conferred with Silber, a Mayo physician on

the RLS Medical Advisory Board and completely changed his previous medication

approach. Bob is to taper and withdraw from his many muscle relaxants, etc.,

and begin a new regime. (I am doing fairly well for now on Klonipin, Permax,

and occasional Sinemet.)

Now, I ask you, out of 12% of the population with RLS, what are the odds of a

couple married 39 years having the same syndrome? They say if people are

together long enough they become like one another--but I think this is going too

far! What do you think?