Let me respond to all of you........@carol228, @julkun, @maveric09. It is a little difficult to follow the posts at this point.

For you who have had the skin biopsy then you know that it measures the strength of the nerves in one cell. My last and only biopsy was four years ago or so and it revealed a severe absence of nerve cells at .09% of what is
expected.

At that time I was beginning to have pain in my abdomen....sort of like you might imagine from one of those pretty glass fireplaces with flames. My legs were also quite upset about not being able to transmit information correctly and so I dealt with the pain. I also began to have some distress in my rib cage in certain areas. To this day, I have reflective pain in certain ribs when I go for my MFR (myofascial release treatment).

The progression of my neuropathy soon led to numb and tingly feet with soles that felt like leather and toes that were freezing most of the time. My toes even lock themselves on top of each other and I have to undo them. I also have two foot treatments a week so that I can continue driving.

Now for the gabapentin. I was unable to take gabapentin in the morning but needed it. So....we moved a dosage of 1200 mg to evening. That ensured that I might sleep better. I have since reduced the dosage to 600 mg by exchanging the other 600 mg for medical cannabis. I can assure you that if I forget to take the gabapentin, I will miss it at about 2 a.m. when the discomfort wakes me up.

At this point, my symptoms of neuropathic itching, pain, and extreme cold are under the best control I can make happen with cannabis tinctures, topicals, and the remaining gabapentin. So....creams can help.

The other medication that I have just increased for the second time is duloxetine. It controls my anxiety very well at 120 mg. every morning. Anxiety creates pain, which creates more anxiety and then more pain, etc. etc. I have just been on the increased dosage for two weeks and I am able to tell the difference. I just handled some processing errors with Apple and AMEX which took 4 days, multiple phone calls, and 2 tanks of gas going back and forth to the Apple store. All because of a typo......someone entered my name wrong.

So....please do not give up. The goal must be to improve your quality of life. There is no cure and the symptoms can be different from person to person and from day to day. Let's stay positive and share with others on Connect. Try some mindfulness meditation........ which is an amazing way to handle pain and is not difficult when you practice every day.

Where will you start? What can you share?
May you all be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.
Chris