Thanks everyone for the advice and everything that you said. It helped me a lot in every way. I sit reading all of your post last night and i know now i am heading toward rt. I feel much better so again i thank you for all your kind words. What a great forum. My appointment is this Friday at 8:15 so the doctor can draw on my hand and then they are going to put me on a machine to fix something for both hands. If all goes good i can choose when to start so i'm looking at the first of March. I'm nervous but excited. I will get 10 treatments and then i guess i'm done. Take care

To PAG and Cindy850

Good luck and keep us posted as to how it goes. TAKE before, during and after pictures. You won't regret the photo's. It is a good documentation of the procedure.

Regards,

Lori

I just got back from my doctors appointment and it went well. I ask a few more questions and then he got his pen out and started to mark his map. Then he sent me to another room where they put my hands in some type of molding clay and did some drawing on a glass plate and got tattoos on hands. Doctor come in a few times to check on everything and told me i might have a very slight chance of loosing my thumbnails but they would grow back. And you know what i don't care as long as this works. I feel so much better knowing i have started this. My treatments start march 1 for 10 days. And i learned something today that i had cords in my thumbs. So every finger has a cord except my 2 index fingers. If any of this sounds strange compared what you have went through please let me know. Thanks everybody for the info and the support. Take care

They are treating palm and all fingers except the index fingers and the fingers would get treated to the middle joint. And he told me very slight chance of loosing just the thumbnails. But your right nothing sound strange with this. The nurses and the staff that was helping today were all looking at their own hands. The doctors name is Dr. Cozad and he is in Liberty Missouri. I'm about 15 minutes away. I live in Independence Missouri. I feel very lucky to have found him.

Hi Australia Calling, This disease is like a Pandora's box . Some have had one surgery and never again. Others like myself have a ticking time bomb. One thing I now know that the younger one has the disease the stronger the indicator is, that once having had surgery you will require more surgery. The time lapse will increase and the result will not be as good. I've had 15 surgeries including 4 skin Grafts. In 07 I had a repeat surgery and within weeks developed numerous nodules adjacent to the fingers that had surgery. I went to Germany and had Radiotherapy under Prof. Seegenschmiedt supervision. It stopped the progression. I was told I might loose a thumb nail but all that happened was I developed a moon shading in the nail as it grew . During my visit I stubbed my toe on the stairs in the hotel and did loose the nail and that was more painfull than any treatment. It is important that one investigates which ever option one chooses and ask questions. My practitioners have told me most patients do not want to know anything about the treatment - only fix the problem. I wonder why ?

Edited 02/25/10 03:43