Two-and-a-half years ago my entire left side went numb over the course of a few minutes and lasted about 36 hours, starting in my scalp and then quickly travelling down my body to my toes. This was near the start of the COVID lockdown but nothing to do with COVID. I guess this was a possible sign of MS as my Mayo (AZ) PCP sent me to a non-Mayo MS specific neurologist. Numbness quickly turned to pain (pins & needles, sharp pain, electric shocks) with it jumping around my left side without rhyme or reason. No signs of lesions and no muscle weakness led to the untested conclusion that it is NLD-SNF. A random finding was taking a Medrol dose pack (steroids) for something else and getting 100% pain relief for 11 days which would then point to it autoimmune / inflammatory in nature. The MS doc dropped me (no hard feelings as not MS) but then trying to get my PCP to find a Mayo neuro only gave me an option to go to the pain clinic - not something I wanted.

At this point I get flair ups or whatever the proper term is called in every area on the left side except my tongue/throat (occipital, trigeminal, shoulder, upper arm, lower arm, hand, fingers, chest, abdomen, groin, anus, thigh, knee, lower leg, ankle, foot, toes). I have been controlling it somewhat with anti-inflammatory supplements for the last two years but that is starting to be less successful. I won't take gabapentin / Lyrica / Cymbalta, etc. and steroids at the Medrol dose pack level have increasingly less effective - I only take them when really bad and the last time relief lasted about 2 days. I know long-term steroids are bad too and feel like I am at my wits end with managing this. I have multiple other issues that make it that much harder to deal with.