Aussie, I met criteria for fibromyalgia way before I met criteria for neuropathy, and in general, at any point in time, the thing that hurts me most is just about never the "neuropathy" type pain, but rather pain from muscles, tendons, or trigger points.

I've tried a lot of things and read a good bit about this, though not at all recently, and two things have helped me: the first is myofascial body-work--I can't BEGIN to rave enough about how much this helped. The second was aerobic exercise. I've never had much endurance, and couldn't keep this up, but it did help. From what I'd read, those were in general the things that helped.

I did develop neuropathy, and I do have arthritis and disk disease, so it's hard to separate one thing from the other. But nothing has approached bodywork for pain for me, and it's been worth every out-of-pocket penny I've spent. And it was all out-of-pocket.

As we speak, the pain I've had the past few days that bothers me the most is NOT from the surgery, and NOT from the neuropathy (which is worse than usual) but is from my shoulder muscles and neck muscles. I'm pretty sure a visit to my old physical therapist or to Melody's Alan's Dr Theirl, the neuro-chiro, would help me greatly.

The fingertips on my left hand have been having neuropathic pain from the tips to the first joint for a day, pain that's never been there before, and I've been getting sharp stings in both arms. Yet my complaint remains much as it was 20 years ago--muscle pains in my shoulders and neck.

I often wonder if the entire neuropathy thing isn't from spinal arthritis and compression, combined with compression from knots from fibro. I've long decided that nothing will ever be proved, and getting the best bodywork I can for whatever ails at the moment is the best I can do.

Does this sound familiar to you?