Numbness

I've noticed that quite a number of people come to my site having used the
search term "numb" or "numbness." Some have searched using the specific
question, "Can you get rid of numb feet."

I want to answer that question with the three things I know about numbness
from my experience.

I regained some feeling in my feet after my doctor prescribed regular,
monthly B12 shots and showed me how to give them to myself. (One shot
a month is about equal to one sublingual 1,000 mcg. Methylcobalamin
lozenge taken daily.)

There was more improvement when the neurologist I was seeing told me to
have extra B12 shots when I was under stress. I was under a lot of stress at
the time. So, for most months I had two or maybe three shots a month.
(That would be equal to two or three 1,000 mcg Methylcobalamin lozenges
taken daily.)

Before the B12 replacement I had little feeling on the bottoms of my feet,
certainly they were no longer ticklish.

In fact, my feet as a whole didn't have much feeling. For instance, I was
doing some clean up behind the chicken house and accidentally got a stick
jammed into my foot. I noticed because the impact tripped me a bit, but it
didn't hurt so I didn't pay much attention. Within a few days, however, my
foot was swollen and I could barely walk because of the pain.

I soaked my foot for six to eight hours a day in Epsom salts, which I
refreshed with hot water so that it was always pretty warm.

I also used a hydrogen peroxide solution for a soak.

It took about three days, but the swelling went away, for which I was very
thankful.

After that, I got some flip-flops that had something like a bed of rubbery
little "nails" sticking up and into the soles of my feet. I felt that the
somewhat sharp rubber would stimulate the soles of my feet and maybe
cause some feeling to return. Since the flip-flops were uncomfortable, I was
encouraged. The sharpness felt hopeful.

When the soles of my feet became ticklish again, I felt certain that the
stimulation had helped, but I knew that the B12 shots had helped. The way
I think it worked was that the B12 shots helped the nerves, and then by
walking on a sort of sharp surface I built up my sense of feeling.

After I moved into my condo, I noticed that I had quite a lot of trouble
being able to move my toes. I would practice trying to move my toes while I
watched television. I felt that by working my toes I would increase their
mobility, sort of the way the flip-flops had helped.

When I was having more balance problems, a lot of wheezing, and
increased memory problems I went to my doctor and to the neurologist. I
felt they should increase the amount of B12 that was prescribed, because it
didn't seem to be helping that much any more.

They were both rather adamant that once B12 was being administered the
neuropathy did not get worse.

The nurse practitioner at my doctor's sent me to a podiatrist.

The podiatrist tested my feet, and sure enough there was not very much, if
any, feeling. And I couldn't flex my toes.

He pointed out to me that my toes were beginning to curl from the lack of
muscle/nerve health. He said that unless I started exercising I would lose
more and more muscle function.

(I had been walking to the library, post office and farmers' market before
my balance problems increased, but once I started falling a lot I was afraid
to walk anywhere and had limited my outings to places like the grocery
store or Wal*Mart where there are carts to hang on to.)

Shortly after my visit to the podiatrist I saw Tony Little advertising the
Gazelle on telly, and I thought it looked perfect because I could hold on to
the bar while using it.

I bought the Gazelle and the exercise was great, but my numbness and
falling problems didn't go away - they got worse, rather than better.

It was two years before I found out that my condo had been built over part
of any old privy pit (that's the untreated excrement under an outdoor toilet).

I'd had what I thought were small "sink holes" out in my garden, which I
had always filled. I had no idea that they were from the privy pit subsiding.

Eventually the subsidence had caused my sewer pipe to break, so there was
all the new sewage being added to the old, and that made a lot of hydrogen
sulfide, which is what was causing my feet to go numb again.

The first nerve the hydrogen sulfide affects is the olfactory. It deadens it
within seconds, and after that you can't really smell well enough to identify
the rotten egg smell of the hydrogen sulfide.

I'd been living in the hydrogen sulfide (at low levels, but 24-7) for two years.
After that amount of time I could no longer feel it if my kitty licked my toes.
I'd have no idea she was doing it unless I looked up and saw her.

After I learned about the hydrogen sulfide, I was upset, but I thought that
probably since the nerve damage symptoms were similar to those from low
B12, that if I had a few B12 shots, I'd be much improved if not fine.

Well, that didn't work.

The nurse practitioner I went to while I was having the privy pit excavated
gave me a prescription for a B12 shot a week, or every other week. I forget.
She also gave me Celebrex to get rid of the swelling.

Then the holistic doctor I saw prescribed a B12 shot a day, but I was never
really sure she'd meant it. It was how the prescription turned out, but I
wasn't sure she'd meant it. She hadn't said it, she'd just written me a
prescription that equaled a shot a day for a year.

I had maybe two shots a week. The idea of more than that was sort of
beyond my grasp.

After I'd been having the extra B12 for awhile, the hair on my arms began
to grow back, but my toes were unchanged, and I still had huge balance
problems and I was always bumping into door frames.

When I accidentally got a darning needle jammed into my toe it hurt when it
hit the bone, but I didn't have any pain from the part that had broken off in
my toe, so I didn't know it was there and I didn't do anything about it until I
was giving myself a B12 shot one morning and my toe was glinting in the
sunshine. It wasn't my toe glinting, of course, it was the broken bits of
needle.

I got the broken bits out, and I soaked my foot in Epsom salts the way I'd
done when I'd hurt my foot years earlier. I also took vitamin C.

My foot didn't swell and I didn't have a fever, so I wasn't worried. I'd
checked the internet to read about tetanus, and everything said that you'd
have swelling and a fever.

Well, I had tetanus. BAD disease. Just really BAD. You can read my
journal if you want to get some idea of what it is like.

About the second worst thing about the tetanus was the way it made my
thigh hurt where I have peripheral neuropathy. It was just sooo bad. The
pain was screaming bad. Not as bad as the muscle seizures in my back, but
the next worse thing.

I got the idea that I should have a B12 shot a day since the pain was in the
area where I'd had peripheral neuropathy and I knew peripheral neuropathy
was a symptom of B12 deficiency.

Up until this point the worst my peripheral neuropathy had ever been was to
feel like a third degree sunburn. What is different about this, and why I say
it was screaming bad pain, is that it would suddenly feel as if hot, molten
glass, molten but still sharp, had been shot into my thigh, like from a shot
gun where there would be lots and lots of entries.

It took a month, or two, maybe longer, but the sudden, extreme pain went
nearly away, and it seemed as if the peripheral neuropathy was better, too.
There wasn't as much of a wooden feeling as there had been.

When I was finally able to see the homeless doctor, this was after my home
had been foreclosed (I was living in my townhouse by now, which I had
previously rented for income) I was prescribed enough Metronidazol to kill
the clostridia bacteria and quite a lot of any blood infection I may have had,
if that was what as causing the red lines under my toe nail.

After I was better from the tetanus and could stand up straight, the doctor
prescribed a B12 shot a day for about three months. Well, that made this
huge huge huge difference. I could actually move my toes again, just like
normal. They just moved perfectly easily and smoothly.

Only then huge new stresses came up and the improvement vanished.

It was last summer that my toes were so good. This summer they are not
that good, but, I am so glad that my peripheral neuropathy in my thigh has
not been sunburn bad again for long periods. (I still get flashes of that pain
when there's a lot of stress, like now in relation to my condo which was
foreclosed and sold without me knowing - after I'd had all the remediation
of the pit completed. It was so distressing to find out when I got an offer on
it that a Realtor in the same company where I had it listed, Sotheby's, had
bought my condo at a foreclosure sale I didn't even know about.) In fact,
my thigh has feeling, it no longer feels wooden when I touch it.

So, I think feeling can come back. I think B12 in sufficient amounts will
allow for the nerves to regenerate or heal, ... I'm not sure what they do, but
I am sure they do something.

I am also certain that stress works against the healing.

This weekend, for instance, I'm having a tingling in my foot that isn't good.
I think it's from how I'm worried again about the loss of the condo. I had
thought that maybe I could get my Chapter 13 reopened and get the condo
back, but the judge denied my motion. Only then I read the order a few
more times (and found there was writing on the back of each sheet) and
discovered that the judge was saying I could file an adversary proceeding.
So then I was so relieved and I felt so much better. Literally much better.
But today I've been worrying that the adversary proceeding may not go as
well as the one I did years ago. It should, but you know how sometimes
things you think will go one way, really go another? That's what I started
thinking and the tingling feeling came into my left foot and has been pretty
bad all day. Not quite to the point where it feels like frost bite... but
uncomfortable.

Or, maybe the tingling got so bad because I started taking serrapeptase two
days ago.

Well, I hope this is helpful to anyone who has questions about numbness
and if there is any hope of regaining feeling.