diagnosis confusion -- blood test to determine CMT?

[Guest guest]

Sorry for the very basic question, but I thought I'd read somewhere that whether

or not a person has CMT can be determined by a blood test. Is this true?? I'm in

limbo with my diagnosis.

My symptoms are these: I have almost no feeling in my feet. They first started

getting numb when I was 18. I'm now 46. Not to gross anyone out, but here's a

good indicator of how numb my feet are: the toenails are gone from three of my

five toes (including the big toe) on the right foot and I never felt a thing. I

can't tell without looking

whether I have socks and/or shoes on my feet. I sometimes stumble when I walk

but I can still " tell my feet what to do " and they'll respond. Within the past

year my hands have become increasingly stiff and numb and occasionally painful.

I have tremors in my hands and muscle spasms in my legs.

The first neurologist said he thinks I have CMT, but said only a very expensive

DNA test could confirm that and he wasn't going to send me for it. A second

neurologist just told me he does NOT think I have CMT -- unless it's a less

common type of it -- and, again, only a very expensive DNA test could determine

whether I have CMT or not and, again, he wasn't going to send me for it.

The second neurologist did say, however, that I definitely have some sort of

hereditary peripheral neuropathy disease. He thinks it's a rare form of

peripheral neuropathy that hasn't been named or typed or whatever. So his

diagnosis, in sum, is that I don't have CMT but that I do have a peripheral

neuropathy disease that parallels CMT.

This doesn't make sense to me: from what I've read, people with CMT have a wide

range of symptoms. The second neurologist seemed to rule out CMT in part because

I had no symptoms as a child but I've read that CMT can begin at any point in a

person's life. So, is there a blood test that can resolve this or not?