[Wide-O]

Greetings.

I'm rather glad I found this particular forum.

My story reads a bit like a manual on how to make sure you get PN (sadly).

It all started out with being stressed out to the max. I was (in hindsight) extremely healthy, didn't even know the name of my doc. But my work was extremely demanding - I run my own company - and the first symptoms were ... acid reflux.

Nothing that a good antacid can't cure of course. So that's what happened first: taking antacid pills for about 8 years.

From then on, a lot of things started to go wrong, and I'm not even sure in what order. Alcohol consumption increased. Smoking increased. Then came the hyperventilation/anxiety attacks (of course, I didn't know what it was, I just thought I was having heart attacks...). Then it was tinnitus, which isn't much fun when music is your life. More drinking, getting more nervous, oh great, good thing there's xanax. More working, more anxiety, forget going out in the sun or eating something useful.

I'll spare you the whole story, but I ended up an alcoholic mess, with a very low B12 reading (< 200) and a vit D. so low they were not able to measure it. You can imagine how that felt...

After ruling out Lyme, alcohol induced PN it was. I guess you all know the pains.

While trying to top up B12/D3 - which worked - I still had this alcohol problem. Bad enough that I decided to check into rehab to kick that and the xanax.

I'm now 7 months alcohol free, in fact, I stopped all medication. I had tried Gabapentin, Lyrica, Tramadol (this does read like those medical spam posts ), but they made me feel pretty bad.

After rehab, the PN in my feet got better first and then worse. It's now creeping up and has reached my knees. Although I no longer suffer the stabbing pains, I do feel like walking on rocks, and standing up is a chore. I am no longer able to function properly.

Time to see if there's something I can do about all that, and that's how I found this forum. I was supposed to restart B12 hydroxocobalamin injections, but I might wait and see if the oral methylcobalamin might do the trick. I also picked up the tips about R-lipoic acid, carnitine, and CoQ10. I do realize that it's a long term endeavor, and expect no miracles - although I am interested to see if my B12 levels will go up like they did with the injections.

I do have quite a few questions, but I'm spending my time her to read up first. I found very useful information, and also was amazed to read that even body length (I'm 6'7") can have an impact on PN.

The one thing that amazes me the most though is the role stress can play on perceived pain. I had to go out for an MRI yesterday (to rule out iron loading - a whole different can of worms...), and the stress of having to go out/walk around was so bad the pain in my feet became so much worse. Today, after having been there, pain is reduced to "normal" levels again. So yes, part of it is "in the head", but that doesn't make it any less real or painful.