Hello,

About four weeks ago I started getting burning in my feet. This continued and seem to worsen for eight or nine days before getting better for a couple. My doctor suspected it may be due to the Propafenone that I am taking from my heart.
I took my last dose about eight days ago. For the last two weeks or so I'll have periods where my feet are burning or icy hot. At other times my ankles burn. Sometimes they will be sharp pains followed by a localized burning in that spot for short time afterwards.

Generally I wake up feeling fine it starts sometime in the mid to late afternoon and then gets better in the evening with some occasional issues. Getting home and taking off my socks and shoes really seems to help. There are times when things feel absolutely normal as well. It seems like lately it's been more of a itchy, warm feeling and/or sharp pains rather than the intense burning.

I'm not sure what to make of any of this. I've yet to see a neurologist for any sort of testing. I was prescribed amitriptyline but have yet to start it because I want to monitor my symptoms.
I'm curious what the opinions are. Does it sound like it's getting better or is it the start of things getting worse? Is there anything that I can do to help?

Thanks,

Monty

Did you have any PN symptoms prior to starting the Propafenone? And are you on any other meds?

It can take a while for your nerves to recover. Have you had your B12, folate, homocysteine levels checked recently. You may need to do some nutritional support to help your nerve recover. Recovery can be misleading in that you can have a increase in symptoms for a few days or weeks as the nerves recover. These episodes are usually followed by a reduction in symptoms. You can then plateau for a quite a while before the next recovery phase starts up again.

Marlene,
Thanks for the reply, I've been very concerned about this.

Looking back I did have some symptoms before but nothing anywhere near as strong and never for days or weeks at a time. Perhaps I'm predisposed and this triggered it.
I've had b12, not sure about folate and homocysteine levels. It was normal.

I've been using alpha lipoid scid, b12 and a high potency b vitamin.

Yesterday for example, I had no burning (or very little) but my feet were warm much of the day and quite itchy. The itching is driving me crazy but admittedly is not as bad as the burning.

My understanding of PN is that there isn't normally such an acute onset and there isn't normally fluctuations where it goes from no pain to severe pain and back to no pain in the same day. This is why I'm hoping this is indeed drug induced.

Thanks

Monty

It may worth your while to pursue getting your homocysteine and folate checked. If your B12 was 200 - 400 range, they would consider that "normal" but it can really mean that you are low or deficient. Most here like to see a B12 over 400 when they are not supplementing. As you know, your result can be falsely elevated if you take your supplement within 3 - 4 days of your blood test. So if you can your hands on the exact B12 level, that could be helpful.

Hopefully you are using active form of the B vitamins.

I don't know enough about the drug you were on but I wonder if it disrupted your mitochondrial. You may want to add in CoQ10 and look at other nutrients that support the mitochondria like ALC, Carnosine and NAC. If at any time you were on a statin, that will deplete CoQ10.

Try putting a good lotion on your feet and see if that helps with the itching. Having the skin protected with a balm or lotion can help reduce those feelings.