I went back and reread the original post: This last comment stood out for me:
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I'm 60 now, and the garbapentin has helped with the cough, and pain somewhat.....but because I was never treated I now have permanet nerve damage. I was awarded my disability, and try everyday to be positive and not grieve over the last 19 years.....I tell myself that at least I've been around to see my son grow into a man.
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The only treatments for acute onset PN (like with Guillain Barre Syndrome)
is plasmapharesis, and this is rarely offered to patients without its specific
paralytic progression.
If autoimmune markers are found in the blood and spinal fluid, IVIG may be tried.
But for all others, there is NO treatment for PN. There are drugs used for symptom relief, but they do nothing for the process. Gabapentin does not heal, it is symptomatic only.
So your doctors dropped the ball, and did not do further testing?
If you haven't had autoimmune markers done, it is never too late for that.
Some drugs actually cause PN. Antibiotics have a nasty track record in that regard. Nitrofurantoin (bladder infections), Cipro and Levaquin, and Metronidazole (Flagyl) are big culprits in this area. Some people react with nerve damage to others Sulfonamides (oral), streptomycin (injection only) and the aminoglycosides gentamycin and amikacin (injectable only). You were using antibiotics for that sinus infection, and if you continue, with those in this list, you face more risk PN wise.
A sudden full body attack may not be PN at all...it may be RSD. We have some posters here with experience in full body RSD.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum21.html
I suggest you put a post up over there, and ask them.
The only known "treatments" for non-autoimmune PN are life style changes and supplements.
Life style includes control of prediabetes (insulin resistance), and evaluation for gluten intolerance. Some other foods can also cause allergy, but gluten from wheat and rye have the most research behind them.
And certain nutrients have been shown to help. You need to know your B12 level, to see if that is your problem. And I have listed other suggestions on this thread:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread43355.html
Before we had things like gabapentin, the main treatment for PN was thiamine.
In fact it remains a TREATMENT, but doctors stopped using it, when the new highly advertised gabapentin came out. Some people have errors in metabolism --the aldehyde dehyrogenase pathway-- and taking thiamine helps them.(The antibiotic Flagyl does its damage thru this pathway) The new form benfotiamine has many positive papers backing it now. Gabapentin does not change anything at the tissue level. It only blocks nerve signals.
There is some new research on the fibro board, about glutamate. It is being found that high glutamate in certain brain areas increase pain perception in people prone to fibromyalgia. I think we will find glutamate is a big player for all chronic pain patients in the future. So you will want to avoid high glutamate containing foods --MSG, just as a caution. MSG is very neurostimulating and problematic anyway.
Another thing to look at is GERD. Chronic GERD can damage the larynx and associated structures.
Another is thyroid disease... when I had my goiter I had alot pressure on the laryngeal nerve, which caused hoarsness and
choking at night while sleeping. While that is better now since the goiter went down, I still have fatigue of the larynx to some
extent. So any enlargement of the thyroid or nodule or tumor of the parathyroids may affect this nerve.
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All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.-- Galileo Galilei
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Weezie looking at petunias 8.25.2017
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