--full nerve cell death in often associated with pretty severe symptoms: complete numbness, lack of propriception or positional sense, even lack of motor response or movement control.

Often, though, cell death is patchy and incomplete and neighboring cells can take over much of the function.

And because of this, myelin and axonal damage are considerably more common than the death of the cell body--neuropathies are much more common than neuronopathies. When recovery does not occur it is usually because the pathologizing cause of the situation hasn't been arrested and is still ongoing.

Fortunately, if your neuropathy is chemotherapy induced, you actually have a pretty good chance of at least partial recovery once the chemo is completely stopped. Many of the most common chemotherapy drugs are notoriously neurotoxic (although not a lot of oncologists mention this up front), but as neuropathies go, chemo-induced neuropathies have a better track record than most, especially if you can do supportive supplementation--Vitamin B12 and essential fatty acids (EFA's) especially, and some people report good results with things like coenzyme Q10 (Cq10).