I wish my doctors would acknowledge this and tell me what to do.

I recently stopped both my Flovent and Spiriva meds for COPD and my neuro symptoms diminished about like watching the river dry up, unfortunately I don't know what the long term results would be as I couldn't breathe very well so restarted them. I'm better at my current lower dose but symptoms are still there.

I've called everything neuropathy in a (wrong ) descriptive sense but I've more recently found that a lot of it seems to be entrapment syndromes, something swells and I get carpel tunnel, ulnar, and radial/medial (I keep forgetting which is which) entrapments. I think my leg pain is related as well, I have symptoms consistant with tarsel tunnel and there is one involving the sural nerve that also sounds like pain that I have had.

I've been Dxed with cervical radiculopathy (not causing much of the arm stuff) and have muscle stiffness in my neck which is known to be associated with the meds, I think I also have some swelling and entrapment there, its better on less drugs too.

I also still have some burning in my feet and it seems to be starting in my arms as well.

I've been offered neurontin for this, is that appropriate if much of the pain is entrapment? It won't do anything for the swelling?

When I first got all this I thought it was the Spiriva, it makes me numb and causes parathesia. Its too long to explain here but I am beginning to think both it and the Flovent play a role. Flovent can cause a neuropathy at times by increasing eosinophils which cause microvasculitis in the nerves (finally found that). Spiriva is supposed to be limited to the muscaric receptors but it isn't, I've always gotten some numbness and parathesias from it. I've been wondering if it could cause neuropathy type symptoms by inhibiting acetycholine (sp) the nerves need to fire when I exercise, etc

This may be too scarey for comments...there is some controversy about Spiriva, a liquid form not approved in the US has been shown to cause heart attacks..the heart is a muscle. There have been some heart attacks with the type I use but pharma is scrambling to minimize it and its generally blamed on COPD effects. I cut my dose down a few months ago because my heart was feeling a little strange, it does cause increased heart rate and I was starting to feel a little something that felt like arrythemia, and I don't know if Neurontin would just cover something like that up.

I can find every single thing I have had on Drugcite, my pulmo told me that if a SE does not meet 5% statistical significance its not related (weasel), when I told him last year I thought I was going to have to go on Neurontin he winced, frowned, looked out the window and did not comment. My PCP seems to feel I have autonomic neuropathy related to COPD but hasn't said anything either.

Any ideas? Im trying to exercise which really improves breathing (not so much the neck and other pains ) and Im about ready to see if I can improve enough to chuck both meds and try herbs or something.

Sorry this is long, mostly I was wondering about Neurontin and the entrapment. I feel like they are just tryng to throw the most common drug at me without bothering to understand what is going on. Does it matter?

judi