Any tricks for helping tigling and pain in hands?

[Marjorie Milliken]

Hi my name is Marjorie and I was dx with Primary progressive MS in Jan 2014. Although I have just been diagnosed I have had many issues and symptoms over the last 7 years that now I know were MS related. Does anyone have any suggestions for helping with the painful numbness and tingly that has started about a month ago in both my hands. It's so painful it wakes me up at night, and continues throughout the day. It varys from my whole hands to just the pads of my fingers. My thumbs are the worst. It started out of the blue. I would love to hear of any tricks to make them feel better. My hands and fingers feel like they are swollen but they aren't. And they do feel hot but putting them in cold water doesn't help. They are super weak all the sudden too. I am not a complainer but this is awful. Thanks , Marjorie

[pvp27]

Pain meds I've taken for MS are Baclofen and Neuronton.

[pvp27]

btw -- I also have PPMS

[Sparky10]

Hi Marjorie! You might consider seeing a chiropractor. I'm not saying that chiropractic care will cure all your ills, but it certainly has helped my symptom that is similar to yours. A good chiro will xray to find the area that needs attention, not just go by what you say.

I used to wake up to severe pain in my fingers, on the left side. (my right is my bad/weak side) My chiro identified the problem and now manipulates that area, along with other problem areas. Can you believe I even walk better after seeing him? He identified why my body appears to have one leg shorter than the other. It isn't really shorter, of course, just that my spine is skewed from 12 years of lifting that leg with my hip.

Back to your problem...
Is it only one-sided, or does the pain alternate or even include both hands at the same time? If it's one-sided, try changing your pillow configuration.

Hope you can figure the problem out soon, and feel better!

[life well lived]

If you are one of us unlucky souls for whom most pain meds do not work, I would suggest looking into hypnotherapy. For me, the only meds I have found help with pain are gabapentin for migraines and vicodin which I try not to take. I try not to take it because when it no longer works for me, I am out of drugs I can take and still work.

Since I married into the Erickson family, I was introduced to hypnotherapy by one of the best in the field, BA Erickson who happens to be the daughter of Milton Erickson.

To give a brief overview, a lot of the hypnotherpapy involves focusing on the minutiae of experiences both current and past. Because I have pain in my wrists and hands, we started with closing my eyes and describing every thing I currently felt as I rested my hands on hers. I described every point of contact, the heat of touching skin, the roughness of each our hands at the point of contact, etc. Then she lead me through an exercise where I recounted different sensation in my hands as she lifted one hand and then the other.

Then it was onto a recounting of past sensations. The funny part is when one is focusing intently on experiencing a feeling, one gains some ability to influence current feelings. Our bodies react physically to our imagination. I sometimes use the trick to cool my hands by remembering what it feels like to allow cold shower water to run down my arms and off my finger tips. Because I do it so often, I can usually put myself in the proper mindset to help my hands with 5 to 10 minutes of quiet concentration. Of course a shower can be a quicker aid to resurrecting the sensation of better feeling arms.