@wsh66 I agree, Stephen. I've learned that, for me at least, sfpn is very much a progressive disease, which means worsening, spreading pain. It began with numbness and tingling, moved on to pain in my heels and toes, then affecting my complete feet, to my ankles and recently to 8" above my ankles.

A problem I've had with pain treatment is that when 30mg doesn't keep up with the pain, and it takes 45mg to give a modicum of relief, my doctor tells me that I'm building a tolerance of whatever it is I'm taking, and refuses to increase the dose. As I said, I just tapered off morphine sulfate contin, which has been the only medication that's helped long term reducing my pain. My pcp is retiring, and we talked at my last appointment about the problem finding a new pcp who would agree to let me continue taking morphine sulfate contin for long term chronic pain. I've tried so many medications for neuropathy pain - more than 25 - with no effective pain control that has lasted longer than a few weeks. My doctors are frustrated that I have intractable pain and nothing they've thrown at me has helped. That's a pcp, neurologist, pain specialist, urologist and ophthalmologist, along with several neurospecialists. My therapist is also frustrated with the hassle I have of being prescribed a therapeutic dose of the one medication that's helped. He's been a professional therapist for a long time, and has seen many people who have been effectively treated with opioids for chronic pain. I just decided I was tired of the whole issue and started a slow taper 3 months ago. Yes, the pain is awful, but I can't go on being treated like a criminal addict.

Sorry for rambling on about my problems. I've never been a consistent exerciser, but I stay healthy and in decent shape for a 70 year old man. My winter project has been bringing a '52 Ford 8N tractor back to life, including cleaning every nut and bolt, and it's all painted and looks like new. I have one last thing that needs to be done, and then I'll find out if I rewired and restored everything right. It has a front loader, and I had to replace all of the hydraulic lines - $$$ - and finished putting them in yesterday. The yoke on the hydraulic spring is frozen, and I need to find someone who has an acetylene torch to come to my house and heat up the yoke threads so I can replace a little flange that was broken. If I weren't such a perfectionist, I could probably have ignored it, but it would have bugged me. Let me tell you, doing this project has been a lot of physical labor, scraping and cleaning and sanding, plenty of it done lying on my back under the tractor, prepping, priming and painting at least 2 finish coats in places no one will ever see.

I'll try to show you what I had to start with, and where the job is today.

Jim