[Rrae]

Hi everyone I'm new here....when I joined, I was floored at how many people and posts there are with peripheral neuropathy !
That in itself is quite a comfort - knowing how easy it will be to talk to you...

I won't go off on a long speal, but in a nutshell here's me : Small Fiber Neuropathy of 5 years, It's in both legs and it's getting harder and harder to walk, go upstairs,,etc... The pain is absolutely intolerable... tried ALLLL the standard meds to no avail... the only thing that has kept me from losing my mind are the stronger opioids, but I'm so tired of being on them and my tolerance just keeps going up. hormones are depleated, etc etc.... Desperately want my life back, so am going to do the SCS (spinal cord stimulator) in the hopes that i can back way off of these meds. HOWEVER, after being on the Fentanyl 100 mcg patches for over a year I know it will not be easy to quit. I've heard of how awful the withdrawals are and I've experienced it to a small degree when I've tried to taper down.....i quickly slapped another patch on cuz i realize how terrible it's gonna be and i don't think i can take that degree of torture!

I will be talking to my pain doc soon about this, but i wanted to get support and advice from the ones i trust the most - - the patients !
Would appreciate input from you, good OR bad. I must face the reality of what I'm dealing with...
I will go ahead and submit this post, and in the meantime I will look thru the stickys. I know there is a lot of wonderful advice and info on PN.
My other concern besides the withdrawal, is HOW to determine my pain level during my SCS trial implant because to be quite honest, I'm afraid I won't know where my original pain ends and the withdrawal pain begins !!

Please Help !
Rae