It is hard to eliminate all the possible causes on your own. It is not fruitful, and it is stressful going down the internet rabbit hole and wondering whether you have every ailment that pops up. "My concern was the sudden onset of the symptoms and now it seems to be progressing rapidly. My biggest fear is losing my motor skills and not being able to care for myself or work." - this should be enough to make any doctor concerned! It is important that your care team understands this impact on your quality of life so that they keep digging and scheduling diagnostics for you. They should methodically rule out things in your medical history (such as your head injury) and continue to run other tests to rule out the most common causes of neuropathy (such as diabetes and alcohol) and circle in to the less common or more intrusive to diagnose.

Your is different than mine in that it goes in waves. Mine is never gone, but certainly fluctuates in severity with no apparent cause. So far, my best course of action has been to be persistent, proactive, and honest with my doctors. I ask them about the test results, I ask them about next steps, I call schedulers instead of waiting for them to call me. If I have read about something online, I respectfully ask them about it.

It took a few months of being consistently in the care of my neurologist before he ran out of diagnostics. That consisted of a brain MRI, a neck, then thoracic spine MRI. Blood and urine tests. Then we got into the more intrusive, including a lumbar puncture to look at my cerebral spinal fluid, then skin biopsies, followed by a fat pad biopsy. Obviously, not all of these may be appropriate for your symptoms, but my point is that there are more than one or two tests for a neurologist to run. I recommend sticking with your care team as much as you can before trying to strike out on your own. I understand a lack of benefits may hinder what you have access to, but use it as much as you can.