I wanted to scream when my husband said I was "turning into one of those people."

He meant the creams. He meant the laptop open late at night. He thought I should stop looking and do what my doctor said.

This was the man who'd built the ramp on my mother's porch. He'd watched her life get smaller right alongside me. He knew why I was scared when a wrinkle I couldn't find in my left sock turned into burning that woke me at night.

And he thought I was being unreasonable.

I wasn't enjoying the search. I wanted to be asleep.

I'd bought the good shoes. I walked every morning, kept my sugar down, took the B12 and checked my feet with a hand mirror.

A magnesium cream from the pharmacy took the edge off for about an hour. Then I tried three more creams from Amazon and the pharmacy, every night for six weeks.

I was still sitting on the bathroom floor at two in the morning, with my feet on the cold tile.

By the time I found Dolores's comment in a diabetes group, I was ready to give up on finding anything else.

I sent her a message. She called me that night and told me to get a pen and my hand mirror.

She wanted me to draw a circle around the spot that burned the worst.

"That's where the jar goes," she said. "Not your whole foot. The circle."

Mine was the ball of my left foot.

The jar she meant was Nurovita's Natural Comfort Balm. I read the page three times. I checked the ingredients and the return policy, because I'd already bought enough jars on hope alone.

Later, Tom asked what I'd been using.

That night, I caught him with his socks off, pressing his thumb into his own toes. He'd had pins and needles he hadn't mentioned to me.

The next morning, he asked if he could use some of my balm.

I've put Dolores's advice here, along with what I checked before I bought the balm. Read that part before you spend another night searching for another cream.
