Nerve Pain?

What does nerve pain feel like?

Post Edited (ChelseaFootball) : 1/18/2015 9:35:34 PM (GMT-7)

have you been asked about doing an EMG? It test the nerves and muscles.

Remember that a PMD is there to treat pain, not necessarily diagnose your overall issues. S/he will definitely support you in getting a comprehensive diagnosis but it took me a while to learn that my PM doc really is mostly about treating the symptom or sometimes disease that is pain, first and foremost.

He always asks how things are going with my other doctors, what I'm doing, and communicates with them, but not in a very diagnostic way. I don't know. Mine's never ordered a test for me, he leaves that to the other docs, but I did have the standard set of 'everything' when I walked through his door, so, he didn't need more.

I wish you tons of success in working with the PM doc - I'm just saying this because I had my hopes up when I went in to see my pain doc that he'd figure out what was wrong with me and I was disappointed, again, for about the millionth time, so, that's why I'm pointing this out to you.

A lot of leg pain that radiates down is from pinched nerve at the spine. A pain doc should be able to diagnose that. I've even had pain just in my lower leg, really the ankle, and foot that was from the spine, and an epidural injection fixed it up for years. Spine pinching a nerve often feels like it starts in the hip - sciatica. It is radiating, which is the key.

There are many places where a nerve comes out of the spine and the least little arthritis or disc bulge can pinch it. Hence, so many different types of nerve injections.

"Nerve" meds work on diabetic nerve pain, pain that is from peripheral nerve damage, but they often don't touch spine-pinched-type nerve pain. I've tried about all of them over the years and had minimal relief at best. I have no peripheral nerve damage, only lots of levels of bone overgrowth and bulging discs.

My pain docs have ordered many MRIs, a couple of nerve conduction studies, and more. I haven't had any help at all from neurologists. My rheumatologist sent me to the pain docs because there isn't enough arthritis for him to treat. My neurosurgeon was finished after surgery on the broken neck, leaving me with a still-pinched nerve. My orthopedic surgeon doesn't recognize nerve pain, but would happily fix my shoulder impingement. I see my pain doc tomorrow. I hope he has another idea for the spasms I get every morning.

Delilahblue -
Welcome to the forum. It's a good idea to start your own thread so you get more responses.

I'm no doctor, just putting out some ideas that have worked for me. You and your therapist and surgeon may be right. The ortho doc can give you a quick, easy injection in the hip bursa to see if it's just local inflammation. If that doesn't work the pain could be from the spine. The ortho doc can prescribe an MRI, which is not an invasive test, to see if there's any impingement showing at the spine.

Do you have a pain doc who will check it out? You could ask the surgeon for a recommendation/referral to a local one. You'll want to see one who is trained as an anesthesiologist, so he can give you spinal steroid injections. There are several types of injections, but the pain doc will know which one might be best for you.

On your own, you can look up some videos about piriformis syndrome - where the sciatic nerve gets trapped in a muscle in the buttock. There are some easy exercises you can try to see if this is a possible cause of your pain. It only takes a little while to see if they work, and it's free.