You should come on over to the Peripheral Neuropathy forum and talk to some of our resident experts on diabetic neuropathy (especially Melody):

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum20.html

There are also a number of sections in the Useful Website "stickies" at the top of the forum page there that would be very good for you to read (look particularly for the papers by Dr. Aaron Vinik, probably the world's leading researcher into small-fiber diabetic neuropathy).