Is this permanent? Worried!
 

Hi everyone,

Three days ago I got a patch of pins and needles on the tip of my little finger. I wasn't too concerned as I've had this before on various fingers and it has gone away. This hasn't.
This morning I discovered the same thing on my big toe, noticable when walking. Again, this hasn't gone. (I had a numb patch between two toes a couple of weeks ago that lasted a week or so but that has gone now).

The shooting pains in my feet at night have almost gone completely, and my feet are almost pain free when I walk (this could be because I have been very inactive for the last 48 hours).
I'm getting lots of fasiculations all over including my face, with some areas staying for a day or two (Not too worried about this though, but it is more prevalent).

I am very worried about all of this. I know compared to most people here these are relatively minor symptoms, but this has only been happening to me since July and I'm scared.
Will these patches stay or is it part of a process? What about the pain? I hate not knowing what's coming next. Please share your experiences.

Thanks,
Karen

I think what you have are paresthesias.

This symptom can be confused with neuropathies.

Here is an explanation....many things cause these feelings.
And it would be different for everyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paresthesia

Since you have migraines, I'd look to a vascular solution.
This would be fish oil daily (3 regular ones) and a good magnesium supplement (avoid Oxide form).

Twitching of the face and eyelids esp, can be stopped with fish oil.
In fact the Basel drug company did a study on this using Omega-6 and Omega-3 from flax oil.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10754430
Since in rats Omega-6 is more important than to humans, I'd leave off the Linoleic acid. Do the fish oil and some flax oil, and see what happens.

If you are taking an antidepressant, an SSRI ? This can cause facial muscle twitching, and also involve the neck. This is because when chronically used SSRIs somehow reduce dopamine and this reduction affects muscles resulting in twitching. It is most common on the face, tongue and neck.

Spells of LOW blood sugar also cause paresthesias, and twitching. So keeping journal to pinpoint when they occur and how long they last would be helpful. If they go away after eating...that would be revealing.

Thanks Mrs D.

I've had parasthesia as part of my migraine auras quite often. It is transient and always in the same arm. The feeling I have in my finger and toe now is like a buzzing when I press on it, like it's partially asleep.
What's the difference between this and neuropathy?

Like I say, I don't have much pain right now, but this has happened before when I've hardly moved around for a day or so. I'm under no illusions that it's gone.

I went for a short run last week. My foot didn't hurt, but I had pins and needles in the toe for 10 minutes after I stopped. Same thing happened after a long walk a couple of days later. I thought that was symptomatic of PN.
I'm confused. My symptoms are erratic but progressing. It seems like I can't win. If I'm active I have more pain, inactive and I have parasthesia.

I am on Seroxat (Paxil), 20mg. I was on it 7 years ago and didn't notice an increase in my muscle twitches then. I had a particularly annoying one yesterday that seemed to be in my intestines rather than a muscle, very odd. I notice the one across my mouth more often when I'm in bed.

If things stay as they are, it would be irritating but easily copable. Like I've said before, without a diagnosis, my mind is in overdrive. I'm fluctuating between anxiety driven conversion disorder at best to MS/ALS at worst.
PN is most likely but that doesn't stop my obsessive fretting.

Karen
PS If anyone thinks my symptoms are of something worse than PN, please don't share. I was merely illustrating my mental state...

Neuropathy means disease of nerves.

Neuropathy can be primary...and when so is constant. CMT is one example.

Secondary neuropathy is cause by something else that is impacting the nerves. Fix that cause, and the nerves settle down.

Having paresthesias, is a symptom. It may be due to disease of the nerves or something else. (like in the list I linked to off Wiki
today in this thread).

Typically neuropathy symptoms are more stable... always there.

However in the beginning, neuropathy may be minor and also come and go.

I think your activity level causing more issues, is possibly a trigger for a tendonitis, or some sort of compression issue.
Resting, is allowing for some healing, perhaps.

no one can really predict wether an individuals PN will progress, remain the same or get better. the same goes with symptoms. they can come and go, or stay, no way of telling. honestly after 12 years now i dont even pay much attention to new symptoms unless they stay for a while. i tell myself that the jabs, stabs, muscle twitches, squeezing, burning etc arent real, just nerves firing when they shouldnt or the brain mininterpreting the signals or lack of signals in the case of numbness.

one thing i would recommend is to stop doing any exercize that is pounding or jarring such as running, weight lifting, tackle footballfor a while until things sort themselves out. you could due serious damage to yourself without even knowing it.

Thanks for sharing...

The stabbing pains in my feet were at their most frequent and intense at the beginning. The dull aches in my feet that I have during the day vary in duration and location, mainly left foot.
The parasthesia in finger and toe are a new thing, that's why I'm concerned.

As I said, it's the not knowing what this is a symptom of is what's difficult for me. If I knew it was PN, I'd like to think I could take it in my stride and be grateful that the pain level was so low compared to what the majority of people I read about here have to endure (and cope with, with a great deal more grace and spirit that I think I could BTW).

Karen

I've been thinking about this situation you are facing, Karen.

What medications are you taking? All of them... and what do
you use for migraine, or migraine prophylaxis?

The triptans will interact with SSRI drugs. They can cause serotonin syndrome in some people.

When trying to get a handle on paresthesias, and/or PN it is helpful too look at your lifestyle.

1) if something irritates you, stop doing it for a while. Several months. This pertains to exercise, like running. Running is difficult to stop, because people become habituated to the runner's high. This this an increase of endogenous pain blocking neurotransmitters, called endorphins. When one first reducing running or stops, there might be rebound pain-- from pain generators that were always there, but blocked by the running.

2) I'd stop the wine and alcohol for 6months and see what happens. Congeners in wine, and sulfites, are irritating to some people, as well as the alcohol. If you have crossed a threshold with the wine, the alcohol will block pain briefly, and then wear off. Confusing the issues.
You want to be able to identify any pain generating areas in order to work on them.

3) Vaccines can be problematic. It will be up to you to decide what to do about them.

4) keep in mind, that menopause is coming, and this can mess with your nerves as the hormones change.

You can PM me your drug list if you prefer privacy, so I can look them up for you. Include all OTC and RX drugs, herbs etc.

great another reason to dread menopause. :eek:

All the women on my side of the family moaned and groaned about menopause...it was ENDLESS. Every little thing... terrible emotional upheavals...etc.

When mine came, it was not really that bad. I didn't have much in the way of hot flashes or upheavals. Mostly my sleeping changed. I was rather glad in fact when it was finally over, and I could "think" as an adult without all those hormones clouding my mind!

But some women who react severely to lowering estrogen, get all sorts of complaints, and have a pretty bad time of it. I used to see them every day. Falling estrogen is a trigger for pain, and many migraines occur during the end of the menstrual cycle, when the estrogen starts to fall suddenly. These women have more difficulties with menopause. I went to a chronic pain conference once which had research on pain and falling estrogen.

You'll just have to see what happens to you.

Stacy it is nothing to dread at all if you have a good doctor that knows how to test for all hormones. Pregnenolone, Progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, etc. Using the correct hormones instead of synthetic. They are all so important for health and the pregnenolone is important for the nervous system.

I had migraines for 15 years that ended right away with the right testing and doses. Lots of doctors were clueless but now more are learning how important they all are.

Ya, I am not looking forward to it, as my PMS has always been horrid. My mother always says PMS is not real, it's in your head. Only someone who does not have it would say that. :(

Sally, you clearly have found a wonderful holistic dr and that is awesome! Problem is not only finding a great one but being able to AFFORD it. Honest truth is, it is just too darn expensive to get healthy, eat healthy, live healthy, organic, supplements, holistic doctors, etc. I have to pick and choose which things I can do and where to spend my money. I did go to a holistic dr once and could only afford his "free" consultation. Truth is, it irritated me that most of his program includes buying HIS supplements. Kinda ticks me off...if he believes in his protocol I should not have to buy my supplements from HIM.

Mind you, I am not saying they are all like that, that was just one of my experiences.

I am sorry you didn't find a good integrative MD. I know there are many. Like any other doctor, it can take a while to find the right one. The level of training varies like with all doctors.

Dr. Weil has the school for MD's. Maybe you could call them or look on the website.

Thanks again Mrs D...

I get migraines every 2 to 4 weeks at the moment but I can sometimes go months without them. I only take ibubrofen or paracetamol for the pain, nothing to prevent auras.

I am in the early stages of the menopause, (blood tests confirmed). After a few very irregular periods of varying lengths over the last year or so, they seem to be back again, very regular, which is odd. I have had no hot flashes or night sweats up to now (thank goodness). I have already looked up common and more unusual menopause symptoms that might explain what's happening at the moment but nothing really fits.

I am on no other medication at all apart from Seroxat which I only started three weeks ago.

The parasthesia in toe/finger is still there, in fact, the patch that went a couple of weeks ago between the toes is also back again, I wonder what will be next...

Karen

Your antidepressant, is not used much in US anymore because really it is not very good for depression and has a boatload of
side effects:

http://www.drugcite.com/?q=paxil
This site is compilation of FDA medwatch reports. You can see by the graph that reports have fallen off yearly and that is because this drug is no longer used much in the US anymore.

Click on "neurological" and see the side effects there including paresthesias.

Glaxo is big in UK and probably that is why you were offered it.
But there is controversy here about it for many years, and there are even forums that discuss how it doesn't work and is very habituating.
http://www.weitzlux.com/paxil/withdr...oms_14809.html
Getting off Paxil is supposedly awful and there have been websites/forums on the net discussing just this one topic for years.

Better would be amitriptyline or nortriptyline, in low dose. This is used for chronic headache too. There are beginning studies showing this drug can also help with nerve repair. These tricyclics have been mainstays for PN pain and chronic pain for quite a while in the US.

I was on it for five years from 2005 to 2010 and I know only too well how hard it is to come off. The withdrawal regimen my doctor suggested was way too fast and I had all the nasty side effects. I had to taper off using the liquid form for months which was hard to get hold of in Britain. At the time there was a lot of denial in the medical profession about how insidious the drug is.
I've had reasonable success with it. I'm still depressed but my extreme highs and lows have been removed. I feel very flat and lethargic but I've never had to deal with the prospect of a life changing illness and be stuck in a limbo of not knowing at the behest of the British healthcare system before. I can't afford to go private and I don't agree in principle. A free, on demand healthcare system available to all, paid for by everyone's taxes, is one of this country's most enlightened institutions. (I don't want to stir up a hornet's nest about Obamacare!)

The reason I'm taking it again is because my doctor thinks my body already knows it and it would therefore kick in quicker. At the time I was in favour of duloxitine bacause I had already read about it's pain relieving use in diabetic neuropathy. I thought I woud kill two birds with one stone so to speak, the pain and depression. I was a bit concerned about the dose of 60mg though as I thought it was a bit high (I'm on 20mg Paxil). I've since found out that dosages of different SSRI's are not necessarily comparable.

Anyway, on a different point, another problem I have at the moment is my voice. For the last month or so, I have struggled to talk in my usual low register, my voice keeps breaking. It's worse in the morning and on days when I hardly talk (easily done living on my own and being off work at the moment).
I mentioned it to my choir leader last week and she gave me some vocal exercises to do and said she thought it was nothing to be concerned about. I have also mentioned it to my therapist. She thinks it's stress related.
Predictably I've looked it up and started panicking when I saw nerve related conditions. I don't have a sore throat, I have no problems swallowing and I mentioned it to my doctor a couple of weeks ago. He looked at it and seemed perplexed by the symptoms but offered no diagnosis. I'll go again this week I think.

Karen

So, here's the weird deal...

Parasthesia in little finger, gone.
Parasthesia in big toe, gone.
Parasthesia that was between two toes for a week or so that went a couple of weeks ago, is back.
Pain in big toe when walking, is back.
Shooting pains in feet at night, is back (quite mild).

Is this the usual coming/going of PN symptoms?
Can anyone identify with any of this?


Karen
PS
Getting a lot of headaches.
Legs feel heavy and aching.

Throat/voice problem update..

Referred to cancer ENT clinic 6 Nov. Apparantly, symptoms lasting this long are a red flag...

Karen

Gosh, I sure hope it is not THAT! do you smoke?

No. I never smoked in my life. My parents were chain smokers though and pubs/bars didn't ban smoking until quite recently here, so I've passively smoked unfortunately.

As soon as the C word was mentioned I started to panic, but he said he had to go down this route because of the way our referral system is set up. He thinks it's more likely to be stress related and I think nerve related.

He also gave me copies of all my recent blood tests which I have been pouring over with the internet to guide me for the last hour or so. I have a low platelet count (136, range 150 - 410) and a slightly out of range red blood cell distribution width ( 14.1, range 11.6 - 14 ).
Low platelet count is linked to headaches and I've had loads recently! I have always bled a lot too, so it makes sense.

I'm going to Italy for a week on Sunday, I have no idea how I'm going to enjoy it with all this going on. I booked it months ago. I really can't face the thought of it at the moment. The Seroxat is making me lethargic and everything is an effort. I'm sure I'll be glad when I get there..

Karen

Low platelets can sometimes accompany autoimmune diseases, like lupus.

And larger red cells... can indicate low B12 status.

Have a good time on your trip. Try not to drink too much wine.
But food in Italy can be very healthy...so enjoy yourself!