Welcome to NeuroTalk:
There are examples of a husband and wife having the same disorder. The best known is Former President Bush Sr. and his wife, and remarkably, even their DOG all developed Grave's hyperthyroidism at the same time! (which is an autoimmune disorder)
It demonstrates that an environmental event or situation may be at the root cause.
I am going off line starting tomorrow and won't be back until late August. So I will give you a few ideas.
1) if you had drug prevention for malaria...and both took it?
Or both of you took Cipro on the trip which is given for traveler's diarrhea, or you had the same vaccines given for traveling, then yes, you may have a similar problem.
2) something in your home, or diet reflects some nutrient you are missing. Well water in your home?...get that tested for arsenic and other heavy metals.
Dietary change --the most likely cause of cramping and fasics is low magnesium. So taking a quality magnesium supplement daily may help that. Magnesium is lost thru the urine in people with impaired glucose tolerance or frank diabetes. It is lost from diuretics (alcohol and coffee) and from some drug therapies.
There is a magnesium thread here:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread1138.html
Low magnesium leads to muscle cramping. Aim for 1/2 the RDA from the links on that thread, for a daily supplement, or eat high magnesium foods, and avoid magnesium OXIDE which is not absorbed.
3) if you took Cipro, on that trip, it could be the reaction to that drug. Here is information on the fluoroquinolone antibiotics, which cause tendon malfunctions and sometimes ruptures after using, and also forms of nerve damage:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/post661103-2.html
Some of the drugs called quinolones used to prevent malaria also cause nerve damage. You will not find a doctor to quickly target this cause, as they for the most part remain clueless to this possibility, but you can search it on the net and find the information you need. Many sites state that damage from this family of drugs is permanent, but Dr. Cohen, on that link has some suggestions which include magnesium supplements. Blood testing for magnesium remains a poor way to reveal this, because only very very low or very very high levels, are useful medically. The large range of "normal" can leave a person with low cellular concentrations, so testing unless you get Spectracell tests doesn't show much.
Also if you both take a statin drug for cholesterol management, that could also be culprit here.
4) Vaccines are possible triggers for the development of autoimmune disorders, and if you both receive the same vaccines all the time, say for the trip and/or yearly flu shots, you could have both developed reactions. This is more common than people and doctors realize.
I have a vaccine thread with links you can read if you want:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread163906.html
5) parasites you may have picked up in S. America...that would be for your doctor to screen for.
You might want to read our PN forum, as I have many threads on various nutrients if you are deficient, and also informational threads on the Subforum there:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum20.html
Many patients do fall through the medical cracks in our country, and our PN forum has many people who have discovered that.
So we have experience with it, and try to help others find some of their own answers. Idiopathic neuropathy is like benign fasiculation syndrome... it does not really exist. It is just a name doctors use to bill your insurance, because a real diagnosis is lacking.
So basically you need to become your own detective and examine what you and your wife are exposed to equally to both have this and at a similar time frame.
I will only be able to post here today, so if you have questions I won't see them because of my trip. (I can only use a free wifi in town about once a week).