i have had pn now for almost 13 years. the pain has defiitely lessened as the numbness has increased. i still get shocking, squeezing, stabbing and burnng pain sporadically but it is much less and the throbbing pain in gone. my main pain problem now is the broken bones type pain i get on standing or walkng which has greatly limited me. i get tired easily, and my limbs start to feel like lead after short periods of activity. balance is a big problem. the pn is still progressing in severity slowly for me.

Hi , Well I'd been struggling into work with back pain for 15 yrs . I helped people with health problems to get into work . My staff were taken from me and had to do everything myself. Started with TMJD , Myofascial pain disorder as well . Than collapsed at work in great pain . Neuropathic facial pain started . Tried to continue as "I had my clients to help" told I needed to think of myself . That was true as things were getting worse and I really could not go on anymore. Don't know your circumstances but your health is the most precious thing we have or haven't . I should have left earlier before things got too bad. I now have to struggle to get up in the morning because I did not look after myself.

Hope things go well with you



Nick

I worked for over 30 yrs with my PN pain. But as I aged and passed 60 yrs old, I found that other factors, were the most decisive in my retiring.

When I found myself crying on the way to work, or on the way home, that is when I called it quits. Frustrations in my job were enormous, and I reached a point where my own sacrifices and dealing with my own pain, was enormous and more than the job itself.

So I decided to retire early. I didn't claim SS until I was 66. I was fortunate to have a husband still working, and that was a factor too. Our son was out of college finally and we examined our tax situation, and the pain/ etc did help me decide to retire.

Everyone has their own pain tolerance etc. I did not have medications to rely upon... so when my pain became too much for me and I was close to retirement anyway...I did it.

Hi,
Do you take Lyrica or Gabapentin or on a Viatmin regime. Did you ever go to Physical Therapy and take long walks to build up strength and endurance.

Thirteen years is a long time to have this monster condition. I noticed in the 8 months I have had it at times it's fine and plenty of times it's not especially at night. During the day when I am active it's is ok most of the time at the day wears on I start feeling the burning and numbness more and the hurt and my legs ache not everyday but throughout the week.

That is great it's is on a slow boat I hope I am that way too with the progression. I noticed lately my ankles feel numb maybe it's crawling up. However I was diagnosed with sensory polyneuropathy from feet to knee.

Thanks for sharing.
uglogirl aka Gloria

i dont take lyrica or gabapentin. tried them both but the side effects were too much. I am taking a few vitamins, among them, fish oil, r lipoic acid, benfotiamine, b complex, b12, acetyl l carnitine, and d3.
i used to take long walks of an hour or more with the dog mostly, but i just cant do it anymore. its not a matter of conditioning for me, my legs and arms just get very tired and heavy very fast. as an example today the chain broke on a ceiling fan. i had to put a new one on but could only keep my arms up for about 30 seconds at a time before i had to put them down again to rest. i did try physical therapy but it didnt help. the more i do in a day the worse the pain is.
no one knows how their pn will progress or if it will progress. it could stay the same or even improve. hopefully yours is one that stays the same or progresses very slowly.

My story is kind of different.....after working for 26 years with the same company I was laid off from my job. This was in Sept 2012 when I was 50......a woman making entirely too much money and my company has done this before. The owner of our company died in 2011 and things went downhill from there. I loved that man......he had a heart of gold. I was there when things were growing and changing constantly. I had a lot of knowledge about the different departments and was a resource for quite a lot of people. We were a family until he died and they started bringing in people that did not understand our way of doing things and bam...it all started changing.....oops....sorry....guess I needed to get that off my chest.

Anywho.....I had (what I call) a routine hysterectomy 3 weeks after I was laid off. Out of the blue my path report came back showing I had cancer......a rare but aggressive uterine cancer. I was already pre-diabetic when I started 6 rounds of chemo. I'm guessing I already had some neuropathy in my toes because they would burn at time after I'd worked all day but I never gave it much thought.......exactly a month after chemo ended I could not walk for the pain in my feet. My PCP said neuropathy, did all sorts of tests and told me to file for disability. So I filed, knowing absolutely nothing about disability, had never really thought about it. I spent months trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with me. Went from dr to dr and finally found a foot and ankle dr that I asked to do a skin punch biopsy......the results were I have no A and C fibers left in my feet. My numbers came back 0 and .06 out of a possible high of 15. This was with Bako Labs.

This has been going on a year and a month and has spread up my legs to my hands and arms....the worst are my feet. Any time my feet are touching something it just stirs the nerves up in my feet. Driving or being in a car riding is very hard. I don't drive now unless absolutely necessary.

I received my SSDI 8 1/2 months after I filed in GA. It was the best thing I ever did for myself. That was one thing off my mind.....a huge thing off my mind. I can now concentrate on trying to get some quality of life back. When dr's see my path report on the skin biopsy they just shake their heads.

At some point you have to take care of yourself first and my time had come. I was very upset when I first filed because I could not believe I would not be able to work. I was laid off with a nice severance and was going to have plenty of time to figure out what I wanted to do going forward which was pretty exciting for me.

Forgive the long story....I've been up all night due to pain and it's finally eased off a little. As least I'm not curled up in the bed in a fetal position

You have to be the one to make the decision when it's time to stop working. All I know is if it's financially possible for you to do it and you believe you'll be ok mentally not working then go for it. Between the cancer and small fiber neuropathy I can truly say life is short and we should take care of ourselves.

Good Luck and please keep us posted.

Debi from Georgia