Have spent the day reading through this forum and copying/pasting helpful suggestions for later reference. Thanks to all the contributors!!

I'm posting for my husband who is suffering from Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy from 12 rounds of FOLFOX. It is primarily in his hands and seems very similar to Carpal Tunnel. His feet are somewhat numb but manageable. His hands very very painful with much loss of fine motor skills. He has endured some really rough cancer treatments and is, miraculously, cancer-free today (hooray!). Now the severe PN is causing distress worse than any of the treatments.

He has tried a number of drugs RXd by his oncologist and is currently taking Cymbalta which seems to help at night when his pain is worse. He is a big believer in nutrition and supplements so I'm trying to wrap my head around that aspect of PN treatment.

He is a weird case though. He has HNPCC and has had two major surgeries for cancer (duodenal and colorectal) in the last 2.5 years, plus chemo, plus radiation.

The biggest surgery was a Whipple which drastically altered his digestive system. We are learning that this surgery changes how the body absorbs nutrients. He no longer absorbs B12 and is taking weekly injections (cyanocobalamin). He no longer absorbs iron and receives periodic IV iron for anemia (suspect a bit of a bleeding gut from the radiation so he needs his iron topped off periodically). Right now he is not anemic though. He is deficient in selenium and vitamin D so he is taking oral supplements to see if he can absorb those. He takes a liquid multi-vitamin, milk thistle, tumeric, fish oil, B6 and B1, and periodically soaks in Epsom salt for magnesium. He eats TONS of berries and other high antiox foods. He east Activia yogurt and takes a probiotic supplement each day.

Because he had a significant portion of his pancreas removed during the Whipple he takes digestive enzymes. He takes Prilosec to reduce stomach acid to protect the digestive enzymes. My understanding is that lower levels of stomach acid play a part in absorption.

He is also at higher risk for diabetes because of the pancreatic loss and I was interested to learn on this forum that nerve damage can occur in prediabetic conditions. He is going to talk to his doctor about a fasting glucose test to see if that is a contributing factor to the PN.

He recently started taking glutamine to help with the PN. He took 5mg the first week, 10 mg the second week, and is now taking 15 mg this week.

Am I correct that CIPN is a form of drug-induced PN and so we should be looking at mitochondrial aids like acetyl carnitine, CoQ-10 and r-lipoic acidacetyl carnitine, CoQ-10 and r-lipoic acid?

Are there other supplements that would be good to try?

Any other CIPN folks who have found improvement? If so, what do you think helped?

Thanks so much!
Trish