https://www.mstrust.org.uk/news/views-and-comments/neuropathic-pain-invisible-illness

Neuropathic pain affects up to 25% of people with MS. It is a consequence of damage to the myelin that surrounds nerves in the central nervous system.

Very commonly the pain is not due to physical damage to the nerve but as a result of a physiological change within it. This means that even when the initial cause is treated or removed, the nerve remains permanently changed and the resulting painful symptoms can become a long-term problem. Once present, neuropathic pain is invariably chronic.

Spasmodic pain is frequently associated with spasticity and muscle spasms. It can be severely debilitating.

Paroxysmal pain is short unpredictable bursts of severe shooting pain, normally neuropathic in nature. This pain can either be ‘spontaneous’, where the nerves fire off for no apparent reason, or ‘evoked’, where a physical movement or stimulus causes the nerve to fire off.

Pain is a common symptom for people with MS and many report the effects as being severe1. People with MS usually have a mixture of both nociceptive and neuropathic pains. Many people can learn to cope with the constant background pain, but it is the unpredictable paroxysms that are most distressing. MS pain is commonly under-reported, under-recognised and under-treated.

This was the greatest explanation of MS pain.

Some people have terrible continuous pain with MS. I can’t even imagine. That must be so difficult and hard to deal with. I get mild pain and infrequent and yet it can drive me crazy.

Last night it started from my big toe, it likes to start from my toe. It is like a painful shock that travels quickly through the toe, down the foot and all the way up the leg sending up the spasms and ending in the twitching. It isn’t even the pain so much as it is the frequency. I can get this once in a while, once a week or 100 times an hour. It is usually my right foot but sometimes twitching happens in my left. No rhyme or reason. No warning. Last night was the many times over the hour. Once I got out of bed, it stopped but my leg is still buzzing without pain. That’s the only way I can explain it. For all those people with chronic illness who suffer from pain, my heart truly goes out to you. I pray that you all get some relief.