pitting edema

[alexann]

Hello:
   My husband has had tingling, numb, sore feet for about 3 or 4 years. He got 2 contizone (sp?) injections, the first one helped the second one did nothing. The doctor basically give up. He then went for 6 acupucture treatments that didn't work either. For the past year he is also getting tingling and numbness in his pinky and ring fingers on his left hand. He also has pitting edema in both feet.

From the research I have done on the internet it sounds like Peripheral Neuropathy (he is also going in for a EMG study soon) but I cannot find much information on pitting edema with Peripheral Neuropathy.  

Does anybody else have pitting edema with PN?  

Also his B12 is low normal at 239 and has been put on B12 supplement once a month injections and takes a 1200mg pill once a day too


Any help would be greatly apprecated.
Thanks

[griswoldt2]

Has your husband been checked for diabetes?  Has he been check for congestive heart failure.  If not but is crucial that he should be!  I don't know if the edema is related to the PN.  EDEMA of the sort you are describing here is often caused by ineffective circulation which can cause many problems.  PN can and us often related to Diabetes.  Left untreated each if these conditions can progress   and cause more severe problems.  PN is a disease of the nerves, numbness and tingling and the related pain can also be due to pressure in a nerve at a point above the problem area, could be from the neck, back, etc.  I would, THOUGH I'm not a Dr. for diabetes and a complete cardiovascular work up to rule them in or out. If neither of those are an issue then an MRI of the spine of the neck(cervical) and lumbar spine in addition to the EMG.

[Checksix6]

Hello,
I'm a 49 year old male and have had Peripheral Neuropathy (PN) and Pitting Edema that started eleven years ago and had a very slow onset for the first four years and I went downhill pretty rapidly for the next eight. It started with tingling and numbness, but went to severe burning, stabbing and shocking pains. To make a very long and extremely frustrating story fairly short, my military rheumatologist found Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease (UCTD) which is a sort of mini-Lupus like catch-all diagnosis. It went into (PN) seriously enough to send me to a pain specialist in 2002, and in 2006 I had an Intrathecal Pain Pump implanted. The pump is implanted in my abdomen and is about the size of a hockey puck and has a catheter fed around (under the skin) and goes into my lumbar spine where it infuses pain medications directly into my intrathecal spinal canal. Since then my pain has been a lot better, although I'm still on oral narcotics.

Now, my case is hopefully more extreme than your husband's. I've been disabled since 2005, although I have a couple of other complaints also, but the PN is really what keeps me down. The neurologists will track progression, in my experience because my case is idiopathic, but the pain doctor is the key. Kill the pain and get sleep. The pain wipes out your ability to sleep and you get caught in a cycle of being unable to fight the pain due to fatigue.

Again, hopefully my case is worse than your husband's. Hopefully they'll do something to diagnose the situation, because as you now know an EMG will only confirm. A piece of advice, stay away from Neurontin and especially Lyrica, I gained 90 pounds in two years. Cymbalta with Topamax seem to work better FOR ME anyway.

Best of luck,
Rick

[Carol in PA]

Your husband may benefit from the information on Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum's site, EndFatigue.dot.com.
See this article:  Effective Treatment for Neuropathic (Nerve) Pain
http://www.endfatigue.com/health_articles_o-q/Pain-effective_treatment_neuropathic.html

He has many suggestions for both the patient and the doctor.
I hope this helps.
Carol