Hi,

Many years ago, I got diagnosed with spinal stenosis, mainly at L4. The symptoms I had at that time was mostly that if I stood or walked for any period of time, both of my legs would start going numb and hurt, to the point that it was like I couldn't feel them anymore.

I eventually had a minimally-invasive laminectomy at L4, in 2010, and the results were tremendous. That whole leg numbness was immediately gone.

However, during recovery from that 1st back surgery, I noticed that I had numbness and tightness in both feet and ankles, and on the outside of both calves (I remember sitting during recovery and flexing my ankles and going "huh?", when I first noticed this).

I don't remember if it was also at that time, but currently, I also get intermittent "burning" sensation in the same areas (both feet/ankles/outside of calves).

This numbness/tightness and burning is worse on my right side than on the left side.

I had a 2nd spine surgery, earlier this year, by the same neurosurgeon, for a "re-exploration of L4". He said that he removed some small cysts and bone spurs, but didn't find anything else. I saw the same neurosurgeon after getting a new MRI, and he said that everything looked ok.

So, I subsequently saw a neurologist, who did a bunch of blood tests (lyme disease, lupus, vitamin B, D, etc.) and said they all were ok except some vitamin D deficiency, so I've been taking once a week 50K vitamin D capsules. He also did an EMG, and diagnosed "idiopathic" peripheral neuropathy.

I had asked him if he could tell if it might be being caused by something going on in my spine, but he said that he could only do the EMG from the knee down because it was too soon after my most recent back surgery. The reason that I asked this is that, to me, it feels like the numbness/tightness and burning get worse after I've sat for awhile.

Aside from this, I also got diagnosed with ostheoarthritis in my right hip (bone-on-bone), and so I just had a hip replacement done on my right hip (currently still recovering from that).

I recently ran across some info that indicated that this kind of burning might be caused by undiagnosed diabetes, so I just had a 2 hour oral glucose tolerance test done this week, and everything was ok (92@fasting, 91@2 hours).

As I mentioned above, I am still having this numbness/tightness and intermittent burning, and am not sure where to go next.

I understand "idiopathic", but I would really like to be able to find out if it's being cause by a back problem or not.

During the period that I was seeing the doctor that did my recent hip replacement, I also saw one of the doctors in that same practice that specialized in spine issues, and he looked at my post-spinal surgery MRIs and basically ridiculed "minimally-invasive surgery" and said that what he thought that I needed to do was a full laminectomy on both L4 and L5 and a fusion, so I'm stuck between 2 different opinions: the neurosurgeon who did my 2 surgeries says no back problems and the other orthopedic surgeon says I need full laminectomy to eliminate the neuropathy.

I'm kind of inclined to go to either the same neurologist that I've been seeing, or maybe another one, and try to get a new EMG or NCV. The question is, having had a hip replacement 2 months ago, if I did that, would they be able to answer the question of whether or not this numbness/tightness and burning is being caused by back problems?

Thanks, and apologies for the long post.

Jim