Hi everyone,
My name is Dan and I'm new here. This is my first post. I would very much appreciate your opinions on my case and point out the possible options I have moving forward.

First I'll outline the onset of my alleged, not fully diagnosed idiopathic polyneuropathy, then I'll give you some interesting background factors.

Also, I'm from Sweden, I'll misspell stuff and be grammatically naive. Bear with me, be patient, please.

Onset
Ok, here goes. A year and a half ago. I'm on vacation with my family. Two weeks on Crete in Greece. Life is great, except my reoccurring lumbago has just hit my lower back in as bad a way I've experienced for 15 years. I can walk, barely. I medicate with painkillers and booze. I know it'll pass in a few days with the correct exercises I've come to learn over the years. In the evening tuck up in bed as comfortable as I can, binging Netflix and cheap Greek beer.

Waking up the next morning I'm totally numb on the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands. Overnight. From 0 to 100%. WTF?

Ok, I'm not the panicky type. I figure it'll pass. I reason I've laid in bed in a strange, still, sarcophagously manner and it's a manner of like a blood-vessel thing. I rub my feet and hands, nothing change. It's still, well, a total numbness, like wearing thin socks and gloves.
But it doesn't hurt. No pain at all. Just numbness. A few days pass. No difference. I do not bother going to the Greek resort-doc. We fly home after our vacation. Same same with my, for me, curious condition.

Back home.
A few weeks pass. No change. Ok, I'll call the doctor. Eventually lands at a neurologist. I take the bloodwork, spinal and brain x-ray – all negative. I do the neural speed thing at the neurologist – mixed results, nothing out of the ordinary. I get a preliminary diagnosis: Hereditary idiopathic neuropathy. The Neuro wants to wait a while before he proceeds with any meds or other stuff.
We're now in like November last year, 2016.

Health care turmoil & other developments.
I switch jobs and get a different health care plan. After a lot of back and forth they decide that my condition is not eligible for their plan. To make a long complicated bureaucratic short, I've yet, the last year, not seen a new neurologist.

Now, the conditions did stay the same, then during another back pain episode, the numbness progressed during a few weeks to, for lack of a better term, moved "deeper" into my soles and palms. The numbness also, during a few weeks, began to cover my feet, toes and half way up the knee. The hand and arms saw the same progression during this time span. And has, since then, stayed basically the same.

Also, during a bad cold I, out of the blue, got numbness in very specific parts of my face. Part of the chin, cheek, just touching the eye, back over the ear and the scalp. All on the left side of my face. It came overnight, and has stayed the same since. Again, no pain, just numbness. But not as pronounced as my feet and hands.

It certainly seems these episodes of back pain, and disease in general, maybe just inflammation, speed up the progression and spread of the numbness.

Now for a bit of background.
The information in the background may, or may not, have anything to do with my condition. I'm not qualified to discern that. Seems to me it's deceptively easy to read in all kinds of stuff in backgrounds. My neurologist, of course, asked a lot of questions, but didn't find any of it real useful, I think. However, some of you may find it interesting.

I'm 47, male. Wife, three kids in the early teens, cat, house, a job I very much like. And very happy with life. No other conditions, no allergies, no psych thing, no nothing really. I'm not an alcoholic, and I don't do drugs. Have not called in sick one day for the past 15 years.

As for my back, I suffered quite a nasty blow to it back in the late 90's playing American football, (yes, we do play it over here, not many of us, but still). It rendered me quite horizontal for a couple of weeks. A lot of herniated discs. I did get upright but for 15 years suffered backlashes like 5 times a year. The last 10 years it's been much better, the number of times a year I get it is more like 3, plus I recover a lot faster. The McKenzie method has helped me a lot.

More background.
Now, reason I mention this is that a real bad *** back pain came as I was on that vacation. And on the peak of that experience I woke up with this condition.

Also may be worth mentioning, since that initial trauma, I've had a few numb patches on my thigh. And, all my reflexes are gone. None whatsoever. And, since then, a slowly progressing Ulnar nerve numbness in both hands, up to a point that my pinkie and half of my ring fingers are very numb. I've never bothered to go see someone about it since that doesn't hurt either.

Other background includes that no one in my family or close relations suffer from np. One of my daughters do have immunological conditions, including celiac disease and hypothyroidism. Other than that, not much to talk about. My relatives are generally a healthy bunch.

My own thoughts and any advice?
So, there it is. I've yet to receive a diagnosis. I've yet to receive any treatment options. I've yet to receive any information regarding anything basically. Just sort of a "meh", and "I'll try to send you to a neurologist" and we'll see and "gee, I don't know".

This, IMHO, is hardly satisfactory. I've come to understand that if, which seems the most likely, I do have some sort of neuropathy, I'm lucky in the respect that mine does not hurt. My feet are swollen and eerie in the morning, and my hands are quite stiff, but it doesn't hurt at all. But, I think, may not always stay that way. And I think it would be quite sad if there actually is a treatment I can try or something I can do, and I just don't do it for lack of knowledge about it. Also, drawing from the history of this thing, doesn't seem to go away by itself. On the contrary, it does progress. How far? I've no idea.

To me, yes, that hideous vacation back pain certainly correlated perfectly with my onset of this condition. Very much so. Did it cause it somehow? I don't know. What I know is that I went to sleep with painkillers and booze to escape the pain in my back, and woke up with this.

And I know that I on two other occasions, during another back episode and a common cold, the condition got markedly worse. And we have a cat that we every other week pluck tics from. So a few months ago I took a blood test regarding that. Which came back negative.

You guys have any ideas on what this is? Any piece of advice to move forward? I would very appreciate your opinions.

Thanks in advance,
Dan