I’m glad the operation went well, but I am sorry about the apparent neuropathy caused by the chemo and/or the operation.

There are not many great medications for neuropathy, at least in my experience—the medications you’ve mentioned are commonly prescribed. They help some, but not others and they pretty much all have side effects, though I’m glad you’ve tolerated most well. Just be cautious with the duloxetine because I’ve heard that’s a beast to wean off if you’ve been on it for a while.

I have extreme sensitivities to medication so had to forgo pregablin, gabapentin, amitryptaline, etc.

Have you tried physical therapy with a regular PT and/or a pelvic PT (it’s a subspecialty)? With your history of anal cancer, a pelvic PT would be experienced with that condition and side effects from that type of surgery and chemo. And a regular PT may be able to help determine if you’re having nerve pain from disc compression or from the previous surgeries and suggest exercises, stretches, or posture changes that might help with the nerve pain, or at least help with your balance. For example, some of my burning in my legs came from disc compression in my lumbar spine. They taught me simple stretches to help and it relieved that burning. I still have small fiber neuropathy, so it didn’t help with that, but it reduced the pain somewhat. And that’s not something that would normally come up in imaging, so it might be worth looking into.