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Sounds very common sense-ish to me. It's nice to have someone be able to evaluate all the findings, summarize them and especially say the problem is not primarily your back and very well could be a focal problem in your leg. The lack of pulse is a major tip-off and gets back to the necessity for speaking with a vascular surgeon (not that you do or do not need surgery!). The EMG's are just okay at sometimes stating that there is a problem with a nerve or root, but really is just a smoking gun when it comes to defining causation as it doesn't say why the problem is there. It is only a small piece of the puzzle.
All of the pieces of the puzzle really need to add up, history of injury, subjective complaints, clinical, imaging findings and special tests findings to give you your best chance at an early correct diagnoses, oh yeah, and someone who can put it all together for you. And it sounds like you got just that with the neurosurgeons (whose residencey is just about the longest of all the medical specialists).
Sounds like you dodged a major bullet, avoiding a potentially needless surgery. Great news!
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Many thanks to you dubious! I followed your advice and explained the broken off piece of collagen, and also asked if the neuro doc could seek out a second doc in the office about what he thought was wrong. Especially when it came to the foot drop and RSD.
He left the room and brought back the department head, and they tag teamed the examination. The chief surgeon was very interested in looking at me considering the weird circumstances. He told me that they quit using the plugs because there was a 10% chance of hematoma, and I happened to fall into that 10%. He also told me that they are now sewing the whole in the artery following the catheterizations with great success.
They spent a great deal of time with me poking and prodding both feet and legs, explaining everything as they went. The chief also said that if he were a clinician, he could very easily have missed this, and sent me off to surgery also. It was very satisfying to finally have someone besides my primary doc spend the time to actually look.
I know this will make my primary doc real happy because most of the time the specialists dont come to the same conclusions he does.
It is also NICE to have caring people here to bounce things off of before seeing specialists and such. It really opens up ones perspective when seen through the eyes of others.
Thank you all soooo much
