What exactly is neuropathic pain anyways?

I have it, cats have it. But if you look it up it covers everything from phantom limb pain to zombies.
I tried to edit the non-cat out of this.
"Central neuropathic pain is found in spinal cord injury and some strokes. Aside from diabetic neuropathy the common causes of painful peripheral neuropathies are herpes zoster infection, nutritional deficiencies, toxins, remote manifestations of malignancies. Neuropathic pain is common in cancer or as a side effect of chemotherapy radiation injury or surgery".
That's pretty non specific, like saying dirt instead of soil, air instead of oxygen and nitrogen.

 

Isn't pain...pain? I hurt...that seems to cover it.

 

It's basically nerve pain.

 

I take care of people and have some neuropathy from old injuries myself. Neuropathic pain is simply damage to a nerve, however , it can feel very different to different people or animals, i'd imagine. Some neuropathy might feel like sharp "electric bolts", some just feels like numbness with no pain, some like a slow and hot burning sensation. Sometimes it just causes weakness with no actual pain. My neuropathy is in the nerves in my face, and it causes muscle spasms/cramps in my muscles - the twitching is actually more annoying than the pain.

The effect of nerve damage really depends on what nerves happen to become damaged which is why there is such variability to what neuropathic pain manifests.

 

Very true. I had postherpetic neuralgia from shingles I had when I was 18. The itching/tingling lasted for 6-7 years, not to mention how painful shingles were... But that's nothing compared to some other situations.

 

The four pain clinics I've been referred to ALL denied me because neuropathic pain is something they can't deal with. Tracy is right, it hurts. Shingles! I got you beat there, trigeminal neuralgia. If my family doctor ever retires I'm screwed. I made an admitting nurse at the local ER red in the face when I pulled out a 50 gallon drum of Percocets, "See, I'm not looking for drugs, already got those. I want help!" I was about to say "If our cats could talk" but they do talk to us. I wish doctors would talk to us.

 

I have trigeminal neuralgia as well, however mine is not the typical as it's from an injury and not in the place on the nerve most people have it. I don't typically have pain - just muscle spasms and numbness mostly. The usual form of this disease I hear is about the worst pain that a person can ever experience. From what I know about it, it's caused sometimes by blood vessels that aren't in the right spot and so they press on the nerve for the face. The only real curative treatment is surgery if they can locate the cause of the nerve compression. They sometimes are able to move the blood vessel so it's not pressing on the nerve.

Diabetic neuropathy (thank goodness) is nowhere near the amount of pain as T. N. It's more of a weakness and burning sensation with some numbness.

 

Some drama.
"Pain associated with Trigeminal Neuralgia is considered one of the most painful sesations in the human experience." Frederic B. Meyer, MD Neurosurgery Department Chair, Mayo Clinic
I had an episode today, made the mistake of going outside for an hour. Sunglasses, AC on all the time, blinds pulled down.
If our cats and dogs went through this they'd go in the basement for a while and then slowly come back up. I've seen animals just deal with severe pain, like it's a part of life. Anyways, this video is a half drama, half informative video.