Hello @mydolly, welcome to Connect. Thank you for sharing what has helped your husband and how important it is to be your own advocate and work with your doctors on a treatment plan. Sometimes narcotics and non conventional treatments are the only thing that works for nerve pain which is probably one of the reasons we have a opioid crisis in this country.

I have no medical training or background but have done a lot research on pain drugs and when they work, they are great for the patient. Unfortunately prolonged use with higher and higher doses to deal with the nerve pain has a lot of bad side effects, including brain fog. I'm fortunate because the nerve pain drugs do nothing for my small fiber peripheral neuropathy because I only have the numbness and tingling for symptoms and not the awful pain. Not that numbness is good ☺ My hope is something that addresses the cause of nerve pain, damaged/dead nerves which the gabapentin, Lyrica and other pain meds do not address. The meds just focus on blocking the pain signals in the brain and not fixing or repairing the nerves. I think the real hope is in stem cell treatment if and when they can figure out how to make it work for the nerve cells. Until then, like you mentioned, we need to work with our doctors to get the needed relief.

John