Hey Dan,

I hope your not serious about exploring bridges in your region. You are clearly having the kinds of problems in which neurologists specialize (tingling, numbness in feet, ankles, wrists and hands; recurrent painful muscle spasms; difficulty walking without pain and the need to rest; relief by gabapentin, etc.). Unfortunately, you seem to have a condition which is hard to diagnose. When looking at some of the more rare and unusual neuropathies, it helps to go to specialized University medical centers to get the diagnostic capacities necessary to figure things out quickly. Otherwise it can take years and years to find relief.


I'd recommend that you follow-up with the with the neurologist that you already saw only to enlist his help to GET A FURTHER REFERRAL to, for example, the Cleveland Clinic for an extensive diagnostic work up. I only recommend the Cleveland Clinic because you mention you are from Northern Ohio and it sounds like it might be close to you (and they have a good program on peripheral neurology.).

Sometimes it take a long time to get into the major medical programs so you might want to take a two prong approach: 1) Get the referral thing going and while you are waiting for your turn at a specialized clinic, 2) systematically try some of the recommendations from MrsD, featherbullet and others in this thread.

The other nerve-pain medication like gabapentin is pregablin (lyrica) (that I know about) and sometimes one might be more or less helpful than the other. It sounds like turning 60 has been a real *****, yeah? I was doing pretty damn well until I hit 50 (I'm 57 now) and then things really started going down hill fast. ;(

Mike