Hi Graeme @Graeme01 ,
I too suffer with a hell of a lot of nerve pain and associated muscle contractions (I’m 10 months post stroke yesterday) , your stroke wasn’t a bleed close to the thalamus by any chance?.
The reason that I ask is that such strokes put you at a higher risk of developing Centralised Post Stroke Pain (CPSP), which used to be called Thalamic Pain.
There are a number of threads that relate peoples’ experiences with pain and its management, for example to one that Simon @SimonInEdinburgh posted linked to above, that are worth a read if you want to see what has worked for some of us. in that thread you’ll spot that Gabapentin did absolutely nothing for me so I’m now on max dose of Pregabalin, which I note didn’t suit you, that at least allows me to sleep whereas in the same thread you’ll spot that others are on a mix of Gabapentin and Amitryptaline that seems to help them (I tried a very low dose of Amitryptaline and couldn’t tolerate it as it just knocked me out).
You’ll not get any definative answer or magic bullet to help you with your pain unfortunately as each of our strokes and associated “gifts” are so individual but what I hope you will gwt is an idea of what you could be asking the doc to prescribe you to try.
I’d suggest searching the forum for “CPSP” if your stroke was indeed a bleed anywhere in the midbrain (i.e. an intercerebral hemorrhage, rather than subarachnoid hemorrhage or an ischemic stroke) and especially if the Thalamus was affected.
As for pain when exercising, the following link may be of interest to you
Take care and best wishes
Rich C.