In my thinking - stress wrecks havoc on us.

In 1998 - I think I worked myself to death. I work from a home office. I had been working like 30 hour sessions - going up to bed for one or two hours and right back too work. That had gone on for months. On July 20, 1998 I died. Lucky for me I happened to be out that day and was found - revived (shocked by EM) and woke up thirteen days later. No one knows how long I was dead.

My wife (now no wife) overheard two Drs talking “if he ever does wake up he will be a vegetable”. Her “official version” was he will have brain damage - we just don’t know how much.

I had and still don’t have any heart damage or problems.

STRESS killed me ...... my body said “heck with you” and checked out.

That “might” have been the start of my nerve damage.

My PN (which is extremely bad today and yesterday) came on all of a sudden in April ‘04.

My long time wife took off mid ‘03 and the sadness was overwhelming. Added to that - my business was already seeing the crash that is in full swing now. My business (35 years self employed same business) is tied to manufacturing in the USA ....... that started going away several years ago.

Stress wrecks havoc on us.

“Is it worth dying for” - is the main message in several books regarding stress.

I am not talking about normal everyday living stress - I am talking about severe stress.

Stress will kill you.

I agree with you. As we know stress can cause to high blood pressure, heart attack. Does it can cause to a damage in our nerves system?

I believe for those of us who have genetic PN, it lies dormant in our systems until it is activated by a stressful event, or string of events, and it is finally activated.... like people with cancer. It is in your genetic dna, it just lies dormant until something activates it.

For myself, it was 18 months of catastrophic events... Dad with cancer, Mom committed suicide, 16 year old daughter had a baby, husband had an affair, and 18 year old daughter moved in with her gang member boyfriend and started using Meth, oh, add to that I got a divorce, got laid off, and lost my home! So, yes, I was under a LOT of stress! If I was an alcoholic, I guess I would have gone on a binge. Instead, I had to stay strong to take care of my daughter and new granddaughter. I had to get a job and provide for them. So, there was more added stress. Add to that experimenting with medications and making it a challenge to do your job.

Perhaps you have PN and don't notice it, because you ARE so stressed??

It is known that when you are subjected to severe stress, depending on what you think is severe stress, you are more likely to get sick. Some people do fine with what I feel it mortal stress.

I think what happens is the idiopathic part, eventually, gives way to some 'reason', be it diabetes, autoimmune or heredity. It has taken them forever to find mine is autoimmune. Diagnosis is a long process.

My PN is the result of high blood sugars from Type 2 Diabetes, the PN began before I knew I was diabetic, it wasnt until I through my back out and ended up in the ER that the doc asked if I knew I was diabetic...

I am sure stress was a contributing factor to my Diabetes if for no other reason than when stressed I would turn to food and be less dilligent about excercise.

I can say that stress increases my PN pain alot. Over the summer I developed Gastroparesis and could not stop throwing up, when it was acute and I had to be rushed to the ER, it was like I could feel the burning numbness spread all the way up to mid thigh and could not stand on my feet.
This of course made me more stressed and made me throw up more and made the PN hurt more. Lol a viscous circle. Kind of a chicken/egg in that instance for me at least.

Kevin, do you know that there is a food borne illness caused by Camylobacter that causes rapidly progressing PN? Severe GI symptoms followed by a rapidly progressing motor PN.
It is treated with IVIG.
from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...ubmed_RVDocSum

More here:
http://www.cdc.gov/nczved/dfbmd/dise...bacter_gi.html