Tendto, I'm glad the water remedy helped your husband. I read on the other arthritis thread about also adding salt to the water. I have to add a caution for both your remedies: Anyone with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) and other ailments needs to be very careful about overdoing liquid intake. In fact, most people suffering from a host of ailments are taking diuretics to eliminate excess water in their system. The excess water creates edema and makes breathing difficult because the lungs fill up with liquid. And people suffering from all kinds of heart problems including CHF and high blood pressure need to lower their salt intake. So, while this remedy may help your husband, it may actually be dangerous for others. Unfortunately, many elderly deal with heart health issues, swelling, and difficulty breathing. So they're a particularly vulnerable group.

(((Karen))) Oh my gracious.. I've been away and didn't realize you were having any surgery. I'm so sorry you've been through such a rough patch and are still experiencing pain. :(:( Praying that healing is much more speedie than what the Dr says. You have no reason at all to apologize. It's VERY important that you look after YOU and work on getting better so you can get back to the fun things. If anyone should apologize, it's myself. I've been a terrible friend as of late and failed miserably at keeping up as I had intended. I can only blame to much work and stretching myself far to thin for quite some time, learning the hard way that eventually even the hardest of effort runs out of steam. I've given up the job for the most part for many reasons (mainly the heartache it brings, stress, anger and all the things that go with it was just more than I could take any longer without losing what was left of my sanity) and fully intend to be around more ofton. It's been sooo long since I've been able to "play".

Have your DH take a towel (you can experiment with different size towels) and roll it. Secure it with rubber bands so it won't unroll and slip it into the edge of his existing pillow. The towel portion should fit comfortably in the crook of his neck while is head rests on the rest of the pillow. Because his pillow is already pretty flat, the towel will probably have to be fairly small. If you need a photo of this setup let me know and I'll fix up a pillow and take a pic. It takes about two minutes to do it. I personally use a special orthopedic pillow that cost me $50 through my Chiropractor's office. It is similar to the one I've linked to below. The Amazon price is pretty good. This pillow has made a huge difference for me and my chiropractor lost my business because of it. Jodi- Here is a link that might be useful: Ortho pillow

Caroline, of course we can be "sisters". I had a successful kidney transplant in January 2012. But I kept having these several-times- a- day "hot flashes", worse than anything I had with menopause seven years ago. My urologist felt my throat and said he felt a one-centimeter nodule. I had no pain or other problems. I then went to a specialist, an endocrinologist. She also felt a nodule and sent me for a sonogram of my neck. It showed seven nodules, five big and two small, the small ones under 2 centimeters. A few days later (last Tuesday) she did the biopsy. I was quite fearful, took a Zanax before, which relaxed me. The assistant had me lie back in a chair and tipped me back, like at the dentist. She cleaned my neck. Then the doctor came in with her needle and a jar for the tissue samples. She nick-named the nodules "The Twins" and "The Triplets" as there were three on the left side and two on the right. The thyroid is in the center front of your neck, just below your adam's apple. She had the assistant spray my neck with something to numb the skin, but I felt every jab. She would stick the needle in , then stir it around and push deeper to get enough tissue. I stopped counting at ten jabs. They told me not to talk or swallow when the needle was in. That was hard.It hurt a lot and I felt a tear roll out of one eye. Finally it was over. She put a couple bandaids on my neck and I was allowed to go home. I took Aleve tablets and kept a bag of frozen peas on my neck for most of Tuesday evening. The next morning I had no pain whatsoever. The tissue samples were sent to a lab that does extensive testing, including Genetic and "Genomic" testing, whatever that is. But the downside is it takes two and a half weeks for the results, so I'm still worrying and waiting. Best case scenario, everything will be benign. Worst case, I will have to have my thyroid removed, but at least I'll be under anesthesia for that. I've been assured one can live a long life without a thyroid, and thyroid cancer is the most curable kind to get. So it could be worse... Good luck, Caroline. Let us know when you get the results. I'll be posting when I know more. This post was edited by jannie on Mon, Sep 2, 13 at 17:38