are slow here, but more help will surely be showing up for you.
Silverlady has lots of experience with rheumatic causes of neuropathy, and it's worth listening to her.
People will be coming along with B12 and gluten advice, so I'll just offer this on the overall picture:
You neurologist is wrong--you don't have to get worse before you get better. I've gotten better, and it's REAL better, not numbed out better, and so have others here.
In terms of medications---what you take and how much is a personal decision. Ive found that most of the medications I've taken for pain have not been worth the side effects--real drowsiness. That being said, I'v gotten great help from Elavil in the ridiculously LOW dose of 20mg at night. It helps my sleep, which makes everything better. I'd put money on your neuro having put you on a much heavier dose. Also, I find Klonopin helps take the edge off, used at night. During the day, I've not been badly enough off to choose the medications.
The most important thing with neuropathy is to keep moving. Most of us have sensory neuropathy, and it's common to stop using parts of us we don't feel so well. The greatest side effect of neuropathy is due to sedentary living--obesity, diabetes, heart disease. So if you can keep yourself active, you'll be better off.
That being said, the stickies have lots of information on diagnosis and treatment, do read them.
I've posted a site,
www.lizajane.org with a list of laboratory tests for the causes of neuropathy. It's important to push doctors to do the tests and make sure they don't miss something treatable.
Rheumatoid arthritis does not, by itself, cause pn. There must be another cause; please be your own advocate and push the doctor to find out what it is. The charts are pretty thorough. Get copies of all results of all tests, so you can share them here. This site has some very smart people who will be intersted in the results, not just that your were told something was "normal".
Begin to keep your own chart--it will pay off in the long run.
Good luck.