Paresthesias that become permanent??

Hello everyone I have a question for you all. Back in the beginning of September when my latest episode was still in high drive I noticed that after doing the dishes on three different occasions I wound up with small painful spots on the tips of some of my fingers and one on the side of my thumb. Most stayed for a few days, some stayed for weeks, but one has not left at all.  It feels like I have a permanent phantom splinter in my finger.

So now I am wondering if what I felt in my fingers after doing the dishes was parathesias after all. If these little spots of pain can turn into something that does not go away I'm wondering if it was something else, like actual nerve damage maybe? I don't understand the paresthesia stuff very well but from what I've read paresthesia don't usually result in actual damage. Right? Wrong?

TIA!  :-)

JD

[COBOB]

Depends.  In peripheral nerve disease, like peripheral neuropathy, the pain is caused by direct damage to the non-myelinated sensory nerves and is considered "permanent."  The sensory nerves can regrow at about 1mm per year under the correct conditions.  In MS and other CNS diseases, it depends on what and where the erroneous pain signal is coming from.  If there is a lesion of the brian or spinal cord that has demyelinated, the feeling in your finger could return to normal when and if that nerve sheath remyelinates.  If the myelin sheath eroded an the axon of the nerve was damaged and transected, feeling may never return.  There are a lot of variables.  If you are still young and your brain still has some plasticity, maybe another axon will take over.

Paresthesias can be temporary or permanent.  


Bob

[jdcatt]

Hi Bob and thank you.

What I've described then does sound like a paresthesia? I'm trying to figure out if paresthesia is what I have in my finger.

If I touch it it hurts but only if I touch it.

[COBOB]

Any abnormal sensation is a paresthesia.  A painful sensation to normal touch can be allodynia.

Bob

[Quixotic1]

jdcatt - All paresthesias are the result of damage to a sensory nerve.  So the damage is already done.  The question is whether the nerve can heal, and only time will tell you that.  A few months is not long enough to decide that it is permanent.

Have you read the Health Page on Paresthesias?

http://www.medhelp.org/health_pages/Multiple-Sclerosis/Paresthesias---Things-That-Go-BUZZ-in-the-Night/show/378?cid=36

If it hurts only when you touch it, then the nerve sends its "bad", error signal of pain only when it is stimulated.  This is still a paresthesia, but since it is painful we would call it neuropathic pain - if you are sure there is NO splinter in the finger, lol.  

Quix

[jdcatt]

Hehe, no, no splinter in my finger. :-) It feels just like it though.

Thanks for explaining Quix, I think I understand a little better now. I was assuming that because the pain hadn't left this spot on my finger then maybe it wasn't a paresthesia. I thought it might be neuropathic pain, but when peripheral neuropathy gets thrown into the convo that's what gets me confused. I was assuming neuropathic pain was something completely separate from paresthesia pain.

I did read read your post on paresthesia, several times in August, actually I found that post when I googled paresthesia back in August and that's how I found this forum. The info just isn't sinking in for me for some reason. I'm usually pretty good at understand stuff.

I'm still feeling a little mystified that doing the dishes may have caused some damage, even if very minor, to my finger. I definitely don't understand that.