Sounds like he's headed to Boston from someplace else to get the expert diagnosis. Maine is in the proximity! And it isn't always true that the best doctors are in the big cities. Good luck checking out the Maine doctors.

Thanks to lamarca for adding to the discussion I started with my links earlier. I work in a research library and take those things for granted, that medical research cites/sites are meant for doctors, and can scare you if you try reading them by yourself without a medical background. But I didn't spell it out. (And I did try the links from home, they are fine off-campus).

Interesting how those medical sources can work, though. I have an acquaintance in New Mexico who was helping me when I almost got moved there after my divorce. Fell through, but that's another story. I felt bad that he'd gone to so much work (as a realtor) and the sale hadn't happened. We kept in touch, and I was surprised several months later to learn from his wife that he'd been hospitalized with an unknown ailment and might possibly lose his legs. The doctors had literally opened one of his legs from groin to instep to see why the cirulation was so bad. The diagnosis was Buerger's Disease (also known as thromboangiitis obliterans) that is caused first and foremost by smoking. I did some searches in our medical databases, and mailed a packet of a dozen articles. I explained that he might not want to read them himself, but if he did, the best he might hope for was a list of terms that he could ask his doctor to define for him, to help him understand his condition better. It turned out that his doctor read all of these articles, and they found an experimental treatment that they were able to apply to the FDA for an exemption to try. I don't think the FDA cooperated, but it was a real boost to them for a while, the idea that they might have an actual treatment for him (that is in regular use in Japan, as we understand). My friend is in a wheelchair now, but he still has his legs. And he quit smoking cold turkey.

Reading medical journals is in some ways a Pandora's box, it can unleash details that you as a patient don't want to know because you can't properly evaluate them. You can scare yourself very badly by trying to diagnose yourself after reading these things. But if you approach the medical journals as a resource, and find someone who has the time and expertise to answer your questions, or if you research the terms you find there in some of the dot.gov or WebMD sites, there can be true power in information.

SRS