Can anyone tell me why my toes are behaving strangely?

I spoke to my GP after my right toe stood to attention, it took ages of rubbing my foot for it to finally give up its stand and start to relax. I was put onto Quinine to try to stop the cramps, this has help a lot, the terrible cramps in my calves have eased, but not my toes. I too was told it was nerve damage that was causing the painful stabbing pains in my toes and fingers and my toes doing their own odd thing. When my toes or toe does stand to attention it is rigid and can only be relaxed by rubbing the top of the foot. I also found wearing thick thermal socks helps a little bit too.

I have had this in various forms since childhood. I first noticed it when my foot would cramp uncontrollably. It occurred so often that while hanging out and playing my arch seemed to tighten so rigorously that it would knock me off my feet. The only thing I could do was just to lie there in horrendous pain, clutching my foot as I didn’t know what else to do. It happened so often, my friends gave it a name: foot attack. They said it reminded them of someone in a show or movie having a heart attack, but mine was in my foot. We always laughed it off as my folks said it was just ‘growing pains’. (Yeah, that helped a pant load) I‘m career military and my position involved regular rigorous work with extreme sleep deprivation for weeks and months on end. (Navy Aircraft Carrier flight deck) We had to play Top Gun all day and work on anything that needed maintained all night, which was usually every night. It seemed that this was when the cramping moved to my toes. Exact same effect, just in a toe or two at a time. The Navy brushed this off as just over-tired feet. (Motrin was the general drug anyone with any ailment received. Cold? Motrin, severed limb? Motrin, cannon ball wound… I digress, but that **** never helped and they were gigantic 800mg ‘horse pills’. Now I’m older and retired with VA disabilities in the 90% range, because if it were 100, they’d actually have to do something for me. No joke. VA’s come a long way toward the better, just not here where I have to go. (Seriously, they once stopped filling my myriad of medications and had to verify way too much information when calling in. When I drove the 2.5hrs to confront this in person, I learned I had been marked ‘deceased‘! No ****! I have refused to go there for nearly a decade because of that but with inflation being what it is these days, I’m now forced to start using them again. Sad but true, meanwhile, no one had taken the cramped toe muscles seriously, one even laughed at me, blaming me for imagining it and it was just foot pain due to being overweight aka, type II diabetes. Any help on this front in the form of information would be hot. I feel for you guys if its even half as painful as what I’m dealing with.

Mod edit to remove profanity

This thread is 12 years old. Maybe a new one would get better response?