--I would wonder about that illness you had.

There are a number of reports of neuropathy syndromes--including those that involve more than bodily extremities--happening after viral or bacterial infections.

The theory is "molecular mimicry autoimmunity"--the body's immmune system is marshalled to fight an invading pathogen, and does so successsfully, but the pathogen has a molecular structure similar enough to some specific bodily tissue (such as nerve) that the now activated immune system thinks that body part is part of the pathogen--and the immune system attacks that.

It may take time for the immune system to "shut off", as it does in cases of Guillain Barre--or it may never shut off, or remit and relpase, as it does in some of the chronic neuropathies such as CIDP (chronic inflammatory demyelinated neuropathies). There are also small-fiber neuropathies (conditions of nerve fibers without myelin) that are suspected to happen this way, though the immune mechanisms have not yet been identified.

I agree that you need neuropathy specialists to run you through a number of the neural antibody tests, as well as the standard autoimmunty workups (anti-nuclear antibody, etc.) if you haven't had those. The Liza Jane spreadhseets are excellent for this purpose, and for tracking your test results over time.