Written by Dr. Blane Schilling, PT, MD| May 22, 2026

If you're reading this with your feet sticking out from under the covers because even the sheet hurts...

If you've started planning your day around when the burning might hit...

If you're sleeping with your legs hanging off the bed because it's the only position that sometimes helps...


I need you to know two things, right now.



First, what you're feeling is real.



That fire in your feet... the tingling, the electric shocks shooting up your legs, the numbness that makes it hard to tell where the floor is... that isn't in your head. And it isn't from "just getting older."



Second, the reason every treatment has failed has nothing to do with you.



It has nothing to do with whether you took enough B12.

Whether you stayed consistent.

Whether you "really committed to the plan."

Nothing has worked because almost every treatment in the neuropathy industry only addresses ONE piece of the problem.

And the kind of neuropathy most doctors miss has THREE pieces.

Miss even one, and the burning comes back.

Every single time.


WHY NOTHING YOU'VE TRIED HAS WORKED
Let me walk you through what you've already tried. And why none of it worked.

The people who recommended these things weren't lying. They just didn't understand the actual problem.

Start with the supplements.

B12. Alpha-lipoic acid. Maybe a special foot cream from the pharmacy.

You took them. Maybe twice a day. Maybe they took the edge off for an hour.

But the burning always came back.

Here's why. Supplements and creams try to soothe the nerve down in your feet. But when that nerve is being squeezed somewhere else, rubbing something on your feet doesn't release the pressure. It never reaches it.

You weren't doing it wrong. The whole approach was wrong.

Then came the pills.

Gabapentin. Lyrica. Maybe Cymbalta if your doctor went nuclear.

They mask the pain signal.

They don't touch the cause.

So the moment they wear off, the burning is right back. Sometimes worse. Now your head is in a fog and the scale keeps climbing.

Then the neurologist.

Test after test. $15,000 worth of them. All to hear one fancy word: "idiopathic." Which is medical speak for "we have no clue."

They measured the damage. Nobody asked where it was coming from.

You spent thousands to be told nobody knows what's wrong with you.

Then the nerve blocks.

$2,000 a pop. Maybe a second round if you got pushed up the chain.

Two weeks of glorious relief, tops. Then back to square one.

And somewhere along the way, a man in a white coat brought up the S word.

A spinal cord stimulator.

Surgery to put a wired device inside your back. $50,000. Weeks of recovery. And half the time, the stimulator doesn't work. You still end up on the pills.

If you've sat through that pitch, I'm sorry. I really am.

I've watched too many of my patients sign up... and come back six months later still burning. Only now with a scar. A different kind of damage. A fresh bill.

The whole industry is fighting a war on the wrong battlefield.

I should know. For 30 years, I was part of it.

THE NIGHT IT FINALLY HIT ME
My name is Dr. Blane Schilling .

I'm a physical therapist with a medical doctorate. It's a combination you don't see often. It means I spent 40 years in pain management.

For 30 of those years I followed the playbook. Pills. Supplements. TENS units. "Just manage the symptoms." And when those didn't work, I referred my patients up the chain. To the same dead-end system I'd watched fail people for years.

I thought I was helping.

Then my wife Sarah was diagnosed with neuropathy.

And nothing I knew worked. Not the pill route. Not the nerve block route. Not the "learn to live with it" route.

For three years, she lived in pain.

One night at 2:47 AM , I woke up alone.

Sarah had tried to make it to the bathroom on her own. Her feet had gone so numb she couldn't feel the floor, and she'd fallen halfway across the bedroom. She'd crawled the last few feet on her hands and knees.

I found her curled up on the cold tile. She wasn't crying. She was sobbing. The kind that comes from someone who's reached the end.

Scotty’s Pit Bar-B-Q . OK GREAT BQ USE TO EAT THRE OR GET TAKE OUT

To All:

Bill recently put out a message detailling where we all live, assuming we are still alive.  At the bottom, it requested that each of us update our personal information on this website

Well, when I clicked on the apporpriate tab, it showed that I still lived in a house that I left 4 years ago. 

I updated my info...Hope you will check out yours, and if necessary, do the same.

Rowland  

Hang in there Bill! Grant and I will celebrate his one year anniversary of his quadruple by-pass heart surgery (CABG) on June 8 and he is doing great. Incidently June 8 is our wedding anniversay-61 years. 

Prays for you to get better.

Bill,

My absentee 1st SGT: Not that you have not ever been dramatic in past posts.  While I do not "want" to believe what you have posted, MOST sincere prayers for whatever you are going through.PLEASE persevere and get past this issue.  You are a valued and needed person in our dwindling community.

Sincerely,

Rowland