--is soemwhat differnt form traumatic or other kinds of arthritis that comes from wear and tear on tissue. Psoriatic arthritis is closer to rheumatoid arthritis or ankylosising spondylitis (and like the latter, is often associated with the HLA-B27 genetic marker) in that the breakdown in tissue is autoimmune in nature:
http://www.medicinenet.com/psoriatic...is/article.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pso...hritis/DS00476
It's entirely possible that Alan's recent IVIg treatments are "reordering" his immune system to some degree and contributing to these flares--although people with psoriasis are quite prone to flares from stress, viruses, environmental triggers, and the like, anyway.
Now, back to you Mel--I suspect that what happened to you at the podiatrist had to do with the stimulation of damaged nerves, that, when stimulated, could not shut off their signalling properly and took time to "calm down". When nerves are damaged incompletely (complete nerve degredation tends to cause numbness or inability to discern vibration or mechanical touch), stimulation to them may set off all sorts of weird signals that the brain interprets in varying ways. In some cases, the nerves may be unable, as they are damaged and not responding to appropriate feedback mechanisms, to stop sending signals even when the stimulation is removed. This is referred to as hyperesthesia--"overage of feeling". Within that category, one can have parasthesia--"weird feelings"--and "allodynia"--pain from normally non-painful stimuli. While many people associate diabetic neuropathy with numbness, and that certainly does occur, it's actually more likely for diabetic neuropathy sufferers to experience pain and other weird sensations that are not consonant with the stimuli felt.
The typical diabetic neuropathy presentation is small-fiber damage--these are the fibers that subsume the sensations of pain and temperature, and problems with them can produce all sorts of pain and hot/cold feelings. The distinction is worth discussing with doctors, as many people with small-fiber problems (I'm one of them, though not diabetic) can have perfectly normal EMG/nerve conduction studies (those tests can only measure problems with larger, myelinated nerves). Damage to smaller fibers can be revealed by quantitative sensory testing or skin biopsy, but most "normal" neuros are unfamiliar with these tests (although the people at Cornell certainly should be--my skin biopsies are examined through Cornell-Weill by Columbia Presbyterian's pathology department).
Another thing--the sensations one feels are not necessarily directly correlated with the degree of nerve damage present--plenty of people have been diagnosed with "mild" neuropathy--partial damage--and have pain off the charts, or stabs, lightning bolts, tingles, and a whole gamut of other weird sensations. In fact, I bet a survey on this site would reveal that people with partial damage have odder symptoms, and more of them, than most whose nerves have been completely destroyed. I suspect in partial damage situations the nerves still signal in response to stimuli, but incompletely, intermittently, and in ways the brain has trouble intepreting. AND, damaged nerves have a tendency to signal on their own, without any stimuli, and you get all sorts of bizarre feelings from that--candle wax burning, a feeling of water running down an arm when nothing is there; feelings of small flies landing on body parts; the list is endless . . .
There are some papers that talk about this in the Useful sites:
http://www.neurocentre.com/home.php
http://www.charcot-marie-tooth.org/about_cmt/pain.php
http://www.thecni.org/reviews/13-2-p07-treihaft.htm
http://www.diabetesforum.net/cgi-bin...content_id=341
In the end, what I think this all means is that your foot nerves are not DEAD, and that's a good thing, but
living damaged nerves can certainly react in unpredictable ways. It's still best in the long run to control sugar levels and to work out a supplement plan that is nerve supportive. It is NOT true that peripheral nerves cannot re-generate; it is a slow process and can produce odd sensatins of its own, but it can happen under the proper conditions.