burning feet and up into legs

[jabele]

Hi everyone,
I have posted in the past under the handle of "someqs17" and haven't been on in years. Back in 2012-2016, I went through a long process where I was really worried about MS and it ended up being 'probable' lyme disease.  I had a bunch of symptoms - nausea, yeast infections, fatigue, all over body tingling, etc. Some symptoms would come and go while others were more chronic. You all were really good to explain that the all over tingling is not consistent with MS, and that really helped me get to the right place where, fast forward to the LLMD in 2016 who did blood testing that he said were "as grey as you can get" but on doxy for 1 month, and then I found a functional doc who did a series of Bee Venom treatments. All my weird neuro type (all over) symptoms have been gone for 6 years. As a side, at the time, back in 2012, I did MRIs all which were clear.

Fast forward to April of this year - I went on a work trip to Japan and while I was there, noticed that I was having some balance/dizziness and just felt a bit off. I got home and all that went away, but about a week or so later, I started getting a weird burning sensation in my feet. I thought it was like athletes foot or something at first, but then realized it was more like a paresthesia, and even starting to feel the sensation creep up my legs a bit. For the most part the symptoms have been confined to my feet and legs, thought there have been a few on/off moments where I thought i felt a little tingle in fingers.

Now the worrier isn't sure if this is a relapse of Lyme or something scary like MS. My functional doctor does interesting testing called "autonomic response testing" where they put vials and stuff near you and thinks its lyme. We've been doing Bee Venom for 3 weeks and I'm on herbs (Biopure, Cocktail) but the feet and leg issues remain and I'm not any better.  

I talked to my regular doctor today, and he agreed to me going to see a neuro. I asked him to do the basic reflex testing bc I told him I'm worried about MS and my concern is he didn't really give me a knee reflex and he didn't say much/know what to make of it.  Meanwhile, if I hit my knee spot, I can get a reflex, but he did it lightly and not sure.


I guess my biggest question is would it be typical to have the 1st symptom of MS be bilateral foot burning/tingling that eventually moves into the legs? While it's in both feet, it's definitely worse in my right foot, which makes me nervous.  I should also add that B12, diabetes, thyroid all normal, so I'm at a place where I either have to hope/assume its a flare up of Lyme which is really hard to confirm in a true scientific way since the blood tests are horrible (and note, the antibody test I just did was negative, which I know doesnt mean anything) and hope my functional doctor is right, or go down the path of checking for MS.  I am scheduled for a neuro in 1 week, but my anxiety has taken hold on this and would love opinions on the knee reflex / meaning, and whether you'd see the first symptom be paresthesia in both feet.  I should add that it's been up and down for the past 3 months -it got better for a few weeks and then came back again and is there more than it isn't (though there are days I don't notice it or it feels better....all and all, its there 4-5/7 days a week on average, for the last couple of months).

[redskin786]

Hey.  Anything additional since your last test?  Im having super similar symptoms, freaking out as well but before i can go to a neuro (waiting), wanted some additional thoughts…

[jabele]

As an update to this, I am beginning to wonder if my tapering of my effexor caused this. The timing aligned with when i was doing this.  I did a "slow" taper and never went fully off, but know effexor is a tough one to get off of.    I have been slowly increasing back to my original dose which didn't seem to help and started to take full dose yesterday and am maybe a bit better today.  It could be though, that the effexor was just covering up something already there since it's off label for neuropathic pain, so jury still out on that.

[jabele]

update- went to a neurologist today and have a completely normal neuro test, and does not think it's likely to be MS, so I am going to put this worry back to bed and focus on the lyme and antidepressant path. It's easy to worry that "everything is MS" (and my old go to worry, so trying to not do that again given the neuro appt). I am going to do a EMG test so we'll see what that shows.