We saw the VA doctor and he helped us get truly back on track with the medications. The VA will take care of most of them, but they would not cover the Temazepam (sleeping pill), Remeron (antidepressant) and the Lidocaine patches.
He can manage without the sleeping pill and he has another antidepressant he can use, but the lidocaine patch has really been helping him, so that one will be tough. We checked and Medicare and our supplemental insurance won't cover it either and if we pay for it ourselves it would cost almost $300 a month so that is out of the question now. Dr. Gonzalez suggested we try lidocaine gel, which he says is not only not as effective as the patch but rubs off on your clothing; however, it may provide some relief, so we will try that. And the VA will pay for it.
Then we talked about Marshall's low back pain so Dr. Gonzalez sent us over to xray and they did an xray of the back.
This evening Dr. Gonzalez called us to tell us that the xray showed two things that we already know about: (1) severe degenerative disease; and (2) cancer. But nothing jumped out as a definitive cause of the severe pain.
So we will wait till next week's tests at the cancer center to see if they can pinpoint the problem and alleviate the pain.
Marshall has pretty much just been staying in bed but he does get up and walk through the house and do some of his exercises. And, most importantly, he is lucid and not hallucinating.
One day at a time....
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