My athletic husband stumbled. He was tired. He had a disease we’d never heard of: peripheral neuropathy
When a fit, athletic 70-year-old suddenly had difficulty walking, he received a troubling diagnosis: peripheral neuropathy, a disease of the nervous system that can leave people crippled and in severe pain. The facts about PN and how to fight it
We started our ascent of Italy’s Stromboli volcano at dusk. It was a long, steady trek upwards, but not an exhausting one. At the crater’s rim, with fountains and bombs of glowing lava exploding into the night sky, we soon forgot the effort it had taken to get there.
Going down, however, was unforgettably harder. The trail through the deep black sand blanketing the massive cone was impossible to follow by the paltry light of our helmet lamps. I had never witnessed my athletic husband struggle before. He stumbled down the mountain for two hours with borrowed walking sticks, falling more than once.
Robert was a fit 70-year-old then, never sick in his life. But after Stromboli, things weren’t quite the same. Back in Rome for a few days before our flight home, he was aware of weakness in his feet and lower legs. His shoes slapped the pavements as if they were too big. It took forever to get back to our hotel after a day of sightseeing.
He was tired, yes, but this was different.
Later that year, in 2010, he was diagnosed with a disease that we had never heard of, and that he shared with millions of others: peripheral neuropathy, or PN.
As we were to learn, the nervous system is composed of two parts. The brain and spinal cord make up the central nervous system, while the nerves running from them form the peripheral nervous system. PN encompasses damage to the nerves that deliver messages to or from the brain.