Shocking!
I’m borrowing Mrs. Figby’s "Hypochondriac Thursday" theme today.
The past few days, I have been merrily working along, dealing with this and that, and suddenly, out of nowhere…
(cue the theme from Jaws)
I will have a sharp, stabbing, electric-shock like feeling in a very specific spot in the arch of my foot.
We’re talking something that jerks me wide awake out of my deep thought with an audible "Ah, ah, ahhhh, OH!" and grabbing at my foot in desperation. Lasts about five seconds. Then, poof, it’s gone again for a random number of hours.
Years ago, I had a pinched nerve in my neck. Or else something called "thoracic outlet syndrome". Either way, it manifested itself similarly in a spot on my upper right arm, with a delightfully, painfully zingy electric shock sensation, numbness and tingling in my last two fingers on that hand, and the ability to actually trace the radial nerve down my arm (yes!) because of the pain. (The radial nerve tracing felt like I was touching a healing bruise.) The pain started out occurring fairly randomly, like maybe once a day, and then escalated to a point where I was feeling it jab my upper arm once every 30 seconds. Like someone is stabbing you with an ice-pick.
It took six months of physical therapy to get rid of that feeling.
Add in to this a family history of diabetes.
And the fact that a typical diabetes symptom is something called Neuropathy, and it typically occurs in the feet.
My oldest brother had both his feet amputated due to diabetes, which led (indirectly) to his death. My dad had problems with his feet for years related to his diabetes.
Probably it’s another pinched nerve. Fun, fun, fun.
Or, according to Dr. Google, it could be a Morton’s Neuroma. Fun, fun, fun.
But then again, almost every single "foot pain" link I connected to that talked about zingy electric-shock like things in the foot talked about diabetes. Since it’s been at least a year since I had a diabetes check, I guess it’s time to go and look again. Bleah. I am totally paranoid about diabetes, even tho my fuddy-duddy older brother biologist claims that diabetes is genetically linked through the mother and I should be fairly safe from it…
So, hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to see the doc-in-a-box we go this afternoon.
posted in Illnesses, OmegaMom | 5 Comments
