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I have terrible pain in my hand and arm - quite debilitating to the point it brings me to tears. I have progressive ms not relapsing remitting which I am lead to understand some do not suffer with pain. I am currently taking Tramadol which helps and I also take sleeping pills at night (which I hate doing). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated who have had sucess managing pain.

Thanks

My wife has a terible burning pain in her right arm. What is strange is that it comes on quickly and lasts about 1 hour and then is gone. This happens 2-5 times per day. None of the doctors have ever heard of MS pain that comes and goes regularly.

She has suffered with this for the past 4 years and has tried about 20 differant drugs, most being anti-siezure drugs. She has also tried accupunture and TENS. Nothing helps much.

I'm sorry that I have no suggestions for you Jam. If anyone has a similar type of pain I would like to hear about it.

Bruce

My burning foot pain went within hours of taking salvia miltiorrhiza which I used for the several months up until my stent operation at Stanford. The herb is a vasodilator and has strong anti-inflammatory properties similar to the tetracyclines which I have also found helpful in the burning foot. It also has strong anti-platelet activity so don't use if on warfarin/aspirin/other anti-coagulants.

Jam
I feel your pain, 2 years ago I finally tackled my long-term increasing nerve-pain and I am glad I did. I've RRMS but a lot of nerve pain. It was a crawling, dragging, aching kind of pain, hard to describe - but I lost so many nights' sleep from it.

I take amitriptyline, 25mg, although you might find even 10mg or 20mg might be enough to deal with your pain. This is a very low dose of an old-fashioned anti-depressant but it is one of the few things that works for neruological pain. It also seems to have help my migraines, so I am glad about that.

Negatives are that at 25mg it has increased my fatigue, but I had to weigh it up. Prior to being on a proper neurological pain med (lived for years on a variety of painkillers to no aviail) I'd missed so many nights' sleep so I prefer to take the ami now and avoid that awful pain and insomnia.

Now I take 25mg about 3-4 hours before bedtime, pain is gone in 1 hour, I sleep very well. Ok I need more coffee in the morning to wake up, but it takes about a month for your body to adjust to this med, so perhaps it might be worth a try for you? I definitely cannot drink more that 2 small units of alcohol on any day while taking this medication - it makes you feel completely exhausted the next day, for me, not worth exceeding a small alcohol limit.

Let us know how you get on if you do choose something to treat the pain.
HTH
p.s. I have also heard of people taking Tegretol for nerve-pain in MS

something to try:

Efficacy of intravenous magnesium in neuropathic pain
http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/89/5/711

NMDA receptor blockade in chronic neuropathic pain: a comparison of ketamine and magnesium chloride
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8740606

and of course if you can't get IV mg sulfate, there's always oral mag glycinate.

it's good for you ms-wise and for general health anyway, even if it turns out not to work on your pain.

Never let ANYONE tell you that pain is not a MS symptom!! I got optic neuritis in january 2008 with excrutiating head pain and eye pain that has NEVER gone away.It is controlled by Oxycontin,and I have been hospitalized 3 times for IV morphine and antiinflammatories.My question is; does anybody else with RRMS have this problem and also If I did have a CCSVI procedure,would it alleviate this problem?The pain is constant BUT made worse if I do too much.(I barely do anything due to the extreme fatigue)I thonk of I have the CCSVI procedure to help my fatigue(this is what stops me from having a life) even if I could due everything i wanted my pain would be unbearable as it is a symptom that never went away from a attack and always flares when I do too much ,obviously a scar near my optic nerve that gets inflammed when i do too much.What does everyone think?

[quote="jimmylegs"]something to try:

Thanks for the replies.

Jam

yw