Hi JW,

I am sorry to hear about your trouble. Nerve entrapment and surgery is a difficult thing to go through and ongoing pain is worrisome. I can speak from experience on this having had a tarsal tunnel release for my tibial nerve which became entrapped and partly torn by a previous surgery.

Nerve recovery can take months and the surgical scar tissue does not fully mature for 12-18 months according to my surgeon. I myself suffered quite a bit with adhesive neuritis as things were calming down and remodeling. My own recovery was gradual and complicated by CRPS which I sadly got from a later procedure. The nerve surgery itself went well and the nature of my pain was different in a short period of time. Did you have improvement and then worsening with activity? Or did it never get much better?

I found "nerve glides" to be helpful during recovery and I still do them from time to time. There are good videos on YouTube for this. If you get buzzing/stinging when at the full extension from the exercise that is a decent hint that something is getting caught up somewhere and not gliding fully.

It is possible for nerves to re-entrap. A diagnostic for this is the "Scratch Collapse Test" which is used by some peripheral nerve specialists to identify entrapment or injury. If your neurosurgeon is not familiar with it a peripheral nerve surgeon might be able to help. My own test was positive before surgery and negative after.

You might also be able to get some info from a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation doctor who does ultrasound of peripheral nerves. These guys can be tricky to find, mine is at an academic center, but they can non-invasively look at superficial nerves and tell you if there is scar tissue on the nerve and potentially treat it by hydrodissection.

Good luck on your appointment. I hope you are just in the healing process and not having other problems. Hang in there, Get the best info you can to assure yourself all is well in there and know that you may still have good days and bad days for a while even if there aren't any problems. My nerve was easily aggravated for quite some time. I still have some deficits, which can happen due to the nature and duration of the entrapment or injury but I am doing much better. It took longer than I wanted it to but I am deeply grateful for the improvement.

I hope you find relief and healing soon,