[wookieenerves]

Hello,

I'm a 26 year old male in otherwise good health. In recent months, I've been experiencing some severe neurological pain. It started in September around a week after experiencing a sinus infection/sore throat. The first noticeable signs included a stabbing type pain in my wrist and lower ankle. As it progressed, the pains appeared to affect my entire body with stabbing like pains everything. Recently, the pain is most noticeable in my fingers and toes. It feels like pinching nerves under my skin. However, I've felt the pains all over including legs, arms, face, abdomen. I've also had some muscle soreness, random muscle twitches/spasms (quite often all over including in my eyes), some burning pain under my feet, and sometimes it feels as if my limbs go to sleep too easily.

I've been to the doctor, who kind of dismissed it as stress (but that was early on, but received basic blood tests, results normal). I also received a nerve conduction study and neurological exam from a neurologist. However, the results appeared normal. I know the nerve conduction doesn't always detect small fiber nerve problems though. They wanted to do an MRI, but my medical bills are piling up and that appears to be on hold. I've also had random itching since earlier this year, but I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

As long as I can remember, I've had some pinching/burning nerve pain in my outer thighs if I stand in one place too long but it had never seemed too severe to see anyone about and I had never felt it anywhere else. Also, I've long experience burning under my feet from standing in the same spot too long as well. Not sure if what I have now spread from that?

I understand a diagnosis can't be made online but hopefully I can gather some insight so I can understand better what may be going on.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[glenntaj]

--that this is a post-infectious neuropathy, either through direct infiltration of nerve by the pathogen or by autoimmune molecular mimicry (in the latter, your body mounts an immune response to the pathogen and may even fight it off, but if the pathogen has a shape that is similar molecularly to that of certain body tissues--in your case, peripheral nerve--the now activated immune system goes after anything with a similar molecular "shape" and produced symptoms).


I am one who it is suspected had an acute-onset body-wide molecular mimicry episode, although it has never been proven (and such assaults are VERY difficult to prove even with extensive testing, as they may involve antibodies unique to the individual). My small-fiber syndrome was finally confirmed by skin biopsy (all other test results, including nerve conduction studies and EMG, were negative or normal). My body-wide burning symptoms, though, certainly indicated something was goind on (but the doctors were clueless until I got to a specialty research/clinical center--the Cornell-Weill Center for Peripheral Neuropathy; that was where much of the testing and skin biopsy were done).

Yes, in these acute onset body wide situations, doctors are trained to look at central nervous system possibilities first (part of why MRI's are a good idea), and many are not aware of these Guillain-Barre type syndromes that do not necessarily involve demyelination of larger nerves but attack on the smaller, unmyelinated ones.

Acute onset neuropathies are typically infectious, toxic, or auotimmune:

http://neuromuscular.wustl.edu/time/...htm#neuropathy

I'd also recommend a visit to our neuropathy forum here--lots of expertise:

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum20.html