Bilateral nerve pain in both legs

Thanks for your reply. I go to see my GP on Monday. I will be requesting on MRI at that time. Hopefully he approves it since he is generally more interested in my insurance company than me. Few questions. I read your previous post. Had bad was the recovery from this surgery. After the complications from my abdominal surgery I have vowed to never have surgery again. Probably not very realistic. Would physical therapy or injections help. Unfortunately I have severe reactions to meds and if there is a known side effect I usually experience it ten fold. I am trying to get use to the side effects of my nerve medication but was started at an extremely low dose once a day. At the rate I am going will be years before I see any results from it. Am currently taking Nuerontin but only 75mg. Tried me at 150mg but nearly passed out and was vomiting at that dose. Thank you for any help you can provide. Hope you continue to find relief.

An MRI may not show the foraminal narrowing causing the stenosis.  That's why my doc did the CT/Myelogram.  I mentioned that after the op, I woke up with all the stenosis pain completely gone...even after the OR drugs wore off.  One night in the hospital, one week of mild meds for the incisional pain, no brace, no rehab.  Truly...it was like the surgery never happened.  The LLIF was a miracle op!!!  

To get this done, you need a neurosurgeon with experience in the LLIF technique.  This is NOT an orthopedic procedure.  He/she will employ a General Surgeon to do the opening, clearing a path to the spine and the close...neuro does everything else. Great choice, great result.

Hmm Chico, something sounds fishy to me here, I never ever worked with a neurosurgeon who needed a general surgeon to "open things up" for him/her. Neurosurgeons have to take a general surgical residency PLUS a neurosurgical residency, it's like 9 years of their lives.  They know everything a general surgeon knows plus all the neurological stuff.  So somebody is running some kind of scam if they are saying a neurosurgeon needs a general surgeon to open for them and are billing you for both surgeries.  It should only be billed as one surgery, and any neurosurgeon can do it from start to finish.  I know, I did my anesthesia training alongside those guys, they would be insulted if you suggested to them they needed someone to open for them.  Heck, any surgeon, heart, lung, neuro, they would all be mad if you suggested they need some "dumb" general surgeon to open for them because they all have further training than the general training.  So, I am thinking this "opening" thing is a way to bill patients unnecessarily for two surgeons, which really sucks.  Somebody got greedy.....

That's the way the procedure works.  The General Surgeon makes the incision and then has to...ummm...move "things" out of the way so the neuro has a straight path to your spine.  If you saw the animation, the neuro then does all of that work.  When done, the GS puts everything "back into place" and closes.  When the docs have multiple LLIFs to do, the GS starts with patient #1 then goes to patient #2 while the neuro does his work on #1.  It's like a rotating assembly line when they schedule all the LLIFs on the same day...teamwork.  My doc has done over 2,000 of these over the years along side a GA.  Agree or not...that's the way it's done.

Thanks again - not sure I would be eligible for this procedure as I have degenerative disc disease - first need the MRI to get referral to neurosurgeon. Hopefully they figure it out soon.

The LLIF can be done for one or two discs in the same operation.  Remember, to insert the spacer (docs call it "the cage", the disc is completely removed before the spacer takes it place.  For those discs, there is no more "disease" because they are just plain gone.  By inserting the "expandable" spacer, the neuro widens the area between the vertebrae relieving all the pressure on the nerves in that space. Ahhhhhh...  Relief.  Think about it...talk to the neuro...

Myelogram almost killed me, I would never have one or recommend one to anyone. I had a CSF leak, took over a week to stop it.

myelograms are old fashioned ways of putting contrast medium in. There are better ways.

What way would you suggest - sorry but I am new to this

These assembly line procedure docs do heavily pick and choose over their patients so you might not fit the criteria.  What they are doing chico, is having the talented doc only do the work requiring the talent and you have no idea who is doing the rest of the operation.  To me, that's always a scary option as you don't know if that person is board certified, trained in the US, heck even if they finished training at all, they could be working " under supervision" of the talented doc who is down the hall working on the next patient in the assembly line.  And they only want non complicated cases so that the doctor can move quickly from room to room. If he/she has to linger, everybody gets all backed up.

Did no one suggest a blood patch?

My neuro is consistently voted one of the top 10 docs in DFW.  When my wife was found to have a brain aneurysm almost eight years ago, he was recommended by my step-daughter who is one of the top trauma nurses in the city.  A simple 90-minute clipping turned into an 8 1/2 hour marathon because the 3 mm aneurysm turned out to be 8 mm wrapped around her cerebral artery, so thin that she would have been dead in 30 days.  With the fourth clipping attempt (because it had previously bled and was stuck to her Broca), this truly dedicated surgeon saved her life.  He could have given up...he didn't...and never would.

When it came time for me to solve a severe sciatica problem two years later, he found a bone spur at L4 crushing my sciatic nerve...no one else was even looking.  For me, he's done two laminectomies, a TLIF fusion at L3-S1 and the LLIF fusion at L2/L3.  After 45 years of hockey, my back is a "junkyard" (his evaluation).  I am truly blessed to have such a talented and dedicated surgeon in my camp.  He never operates unless he has to...with me, he has to.  Every op has been successful in alleviating my pain.  No, I'll never play my favorite sport again but, at 70, I can walk and live without the pain I had experienced.

I had the LLIF last March.  By November, I was starting to experiencing lower back pain again.  Tom pointed to L2-L4 as the possible source.  A quick x-ray revealed that the LLIF worked waaaay too well with extensive bone growth around the fusion. This was impinging on a whole lot of nerves posteriorly and anteriorly.  Took him 3 1/2 hours to clean it all out in January and now, I'm pain free.  You got a doc who will take care of you like that?  

I don't know about other surgeons anywhere else.  However, my guy is a gift from The Universe who truly cares for his patients, treats them with respect and applies every tool at his disposal for our collective well being...including using a GA when necessary to treat as many of his patients as possible in the shortest amount of time.  To suggest any other motive, at least for my guy, is patently wrong.  I hope that someday, you can find a doc that you can trust with your health and maybe your life.  Then you be as lucky and blessed as we are.

They didn’t suggest anything at that time apart from lying flat in a hospital bed for a week. I had no idea until years later what had been wrong with me. I thought my head would explode the pain was so intense, I think they probably thought I was making a fuss after the myleogram.

The dr who did it was so inept, fluid was running down my back as he had attempt after attempt to get the needle in the right place.

I am in US - not sure what is being impinged but it starts in the bottom down my thighs wraps around above the knee down both sides of the calves to top of feet - currently sitting here on two ice packs. It all started after an abdominal surgery which caused nerve damage leaving me sitting a lot