--in etiology, progression, and distribution beyond the usual "glove and stocking" (feet/leg/hand) pattern that newbie medical students learn as "typical" it's very difficult to comment on any of this yet.

Shooting pains are common, and often represent some sort of ongoing nerve assault. Of course, so does burning, tinlging, and a lot of other parasthetic sensations. Numbness tends to represent a more advanced stage, when nerves stop sending signals.

What kind of testing have you so far, in detail? It's been the expereience of many here that unless one lucks out and gets to a neuropathy specialist early, many neurologists think in a very limited way as to testing, part of the reasoning behind the Liza Jane spreadsheets:

www.lizajane.org

These are as comprehesive a listing of tests for neural symptoms we could come up with, and the spreadsheet format allows one to track results over time (and suggest further avenues to doctors).