Earlier this year, on the morning of April 25th, I awoke to an unusual sensation in my body.

Both feet had an odd ache in them, like each was painfully reawakening from a long dip in icy water, a feeling which then morphed into a partially numbed, partially tingly condition that hung around for the day.

I connected these weird foot feelings to a related experience I had had off and on in recent years with similar but much less intense sensations coming and going in just my right foot.

At times, that foot would be overcome with a sensation that I was wearing a wet sock inside an ankle high waterproof boot, and the coldness, which was felt up to my ankle, would be interrupted by the feeling of a low-grade electrical current running through my foot. Episodes like that in my foot would appear for a week or two, and then disappear again- forgotten for 3 to 6 months- until, because who knows what triggered it, another would occurn. My foot would feel mildly uncomfortable and numb and weak during these spells, and then recover.

But for each of those past episodes, only my right foot felt abnormal and affected.

Until April 25th, when the new day revealed to me that something had changed in my body.

On this morning, both of my feet felt encased in tingly numbness, and that sensation did not subside in either of them as I moved into and through the day.

When I awoke the next morning, the weird foot feelings remained.

And then also on the next morning.

At first, I hoped it was just perhaps an unusual reaction to something I had ingested or encountered during the previous few days, and I tried to put the sensations out of mind, wishing instead for their disappearance within a short time.

After a week of the foot weirdness, it was clear something else was going in my body, and with a newfound nervousness, I, lacking a primary physician I could see about it, hopped online to use my hospital’s website to see about finding a new doctor.

No M.D.’s in the system were available as primaries accepting new patients except for pediatricians.

I got a little down, but within a day, symptoms in my feet seemed to quiet quite a bit. I was still dealing with tingling and numbness, but in a less pronounced way, in each foot.

But in the beginning of April, the sensations amplified again. At times, my feet felt swollen, as if I had become a marshmallow man, and moving my toes around felt like I was moving them within giant blobs of stiff stuff. At other moments, my feet felt like the nerves were all on high alert, and the soles of my feet felt on fire, hot and needled.

My reawakened concern led me to make a visit at a nearby Urgent Care- hoping, if anything, to get some sort of insight into what was going on.

I, leaning on my significant from my Web M.D. credentials, had surmised for some time that this condition might be the product of one of several possible diseases now resident in my body. Diabetes. Gout. Multiple Sclerosis. Or heck, let’s throw cancer or ALS in there for a good sobering scare.

A nice physician listened to me describe my symptoms and worries and gave me a short exam, after which, he said I was generally in good shape and he could find nothing explaining what (parathesia) I was feeling. He had a nurse come and take some blood, to answer a few questions for him.

My bloodwork showed him nothing abnormal, which also took diabetes off the attribution list.

I went home, relieved about the diabetes part, but naturally unrelieved about the results of the assessment.

“Find yourself a primary doctor”, he told me, “to help you figure this out.”

For a month and a half, I visited the hospital system’s “Find a Doc” page off and on while the neuropathies in my feet continued.

And with a little luck, in late May, a new physician was on the finder page who was taking new clients.

Knowing nothing about her, I called her office immediately and set up a first appointment to visit with her.

And when I met her in early June, I was happy. She was new to the state and new to the network, but a younger doctor with some experience. And she was available, and listened, and empathetic. And earnest to help me find some answers for the issues I shared with her.

The symptoms had waxed and waned several times during that intervening month, so she ran a broad panel of blood test on me, just checking whatever she could about my chemistry. We found a few things that needed attention (significantly, my Vitamin B levels were low), but none of them seemed to clarify much about my foot problems.

In a followup visit, she put in for me to get an MRI, but two weeks later, my insurance declined it.

[Author’s head shake here.]

So, she said, perhaps the best way to gain warrant for the MRI would be if I saw a neurologist.

She set me up for an appointment with a neurologist in late August, and on the morning of August 26th, I visited his office, unsure of what the morning would entail.

I knew from the appointment description an electromyogram was involved, but I did not know what it was.

This doctor, a seemingly mirthful older man with a British accent, asked me a few direct questions related to my health history and the leg issues, and then had me lay on an examination table, where he attached sensor pads to various places around my leg and foot, and then ran electrical current through them. He listened to the stream of pops his equipment made with the flow of current in my limb, and then moved some sensors around. And then he said we would do it again, but this time, he needed to stick a needle into some muscles for a different reading.

He checked when he mentioned one of his patient’s has to undergo this procedure every 6 months, and how that man calls him “Dr. Pain”. I am unsettled in the moment.

He sets his pads again, needles into my calf, turns on the current and listens. And then he tells me to flex that muscle.

I do, and it is not a pleasant feeling. He listens to the popping, and then says he will move elsewhere down my leg.

I am hoping I will not have to see him again every six months like the other patient.

After five or six such prickly investigations, he says he is done and invited me to dress.

“Well, the condition in your feet is certainly abnormal.”

He goes on to explain to me that it is like I have burned through the nervous tissues in my feet, or something like that, and where normal people have nervous tissues that regenerate and recover, or have more tissue in their network, I don’t.

And so the questions stir in my head. What does this mean? What is causing this problem? And what can be done about it? What, if anything, do I have?

I ask him about MS, and he chuckles.

“You are too old for that.”

Okay- but then what is it, and what can I do about it.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, and as far as I can tell, this is an inherited condition, an issue that is based on your genetics.”

What does this mean? Is there anything I can do for it?

“My sense is that you have had this condition developing in you for a very long time, and it has just recently revealed itself to you.”

I think, no one in my family has had neuropathies like this that I know of. How is it genetic?

“Unfortunately, I don’t have much I can tell about it otherwise, and how it will progress. Just continue to live normally and to eat a good diet, get exercise, and decent rest.”

“I have a very good friend who has had the same kind of issue for the last twenty year, and he has remained active and healthy otherwise.”

Dressed and consultation complete, I leave him and his office, and with my feet still buzzing and my left leg a little sore in spots from the EMG, I go home.

In the several weeks since that appointment, not much has changed with my legs. I have had a few nights where the discomfort in my legs was more pronounced, with leg aches accompanying the foot sensations, and several mornings where donning socks was like packing my feet in lava rocks.

Genetics.

I’m not sure where to go from here. But I guess we’ll find out.