:madI had a MRI in March, The written report was horrible. Multi level lateral recess stenosis. Also congenitally short pedicles. I had severe leg/feet pains. MRI narrative written to scare the hell out of me.
Now In June I go to Orthopedic Surgeon. He downplays the whole thing. He says it is pretty much a normal 50 year old MRI. He says there is nothing in my back that is causing my leg pains.
I have to wait another month for a nerve test on my legs
He says I have some kind of peripheral neuropathy. Also a low chance it is MS.
Thankfully I am stable on 1800 mg. Neurontin.

Hey Lemnoc, I have PN and I can tell you leg and foot pain were present long before dx for peripheral polyneuropathy, unforturnately not before some nervers totally died. In 1976 when mine started they knew even less about PN than they know today, which is saying a lot because most people today don't know anything about nor heard about PN that includes most doctors.

Before stopping work some days my feet felt all broken up, and my legs felt heavy and like they were going to explode. I used high doses of over the counter pain relivers, until 2010 when I had total knee replacement. Now I take Gabapentin 1800mg and climbing, Tramadol 200mg, Diflunisal 1000mg, and a drepression med 40mg a day and it never takes the neuropathy pain totally away, and working less each month so probably will increase Gabapentin and Tramadol this month.

Hang in there and keep up your quest for info and check out PN sites here and on the web and go to your neuro appt loaded for bear and don't take I don't know for a answer.

Good luck
and God Bless!

they always tell you the stenosis has nothing to do with the pain you feel. I think they're full of you know what!!!! I'm glad the Neurontin helped you. I had no luck with it. thank god for pain meds. It's too bad there aren't more pain specialists there.

Hi Lemnoc,

I don't think anybody actually sat down and thought, "Let's write this report to scare the bejeebers out of this person." These reports are written by medicos for medicos - in their own jargon. Most patients don't even see them, let alone understand them (I sure don't, even though I do read them and keep copies).

I got what I thought was a pretty scary report too, but as it turns out, if somebody is in a condition that warrants getting an MRI, the report is apt to sound pretty scary to the average lay person anyway.

As it was put to me by my ortho guy, lots of people are walking around with stenosis and other scary sounding spinal conditions, and are in no pain at all, and I believe that. What does it mean? Absolutely nothing. Well, actually, it means that just having stenosis does not necessarily mean that person is in pain, or that because a person is in pain, that the stenosis is the cause (although it could be). Every person, every case, every stenosis (or other abnormality) is different. It's probably just not a good idea for anyone (medicos or patients) to make broad sweeping statements in either direction.

As to why he says it's pretty much normal for a 50 year-old - I think it probably is. These guys see lots of these reports, of people in pain, who have something wrong, so for what they see, it's going to be 'typical'. Partly it's the price we pay for walking upright - lotta stress put on that upright spine in 50+ years. And 50, in the long course of humanity, is actually a pretty long time; the average human lifespan has increased dramatically, especially during the 20th century. See: Fig 1.
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2...f-lifespan.php

So what we consider middle age today was a pretty ripe old age not that long ago.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need to put these things into perspective, and that your doc could/should have done a better job of explaining things to you. It does take time to get a proper Dx. Sometimes a good deal of time, money, & effort are spent just ruling things out, and then more spent trying to figure out the real reasons. In the meantime, we're the ones who have to endure the pain and other symptoms. I don't have an answer/solution for that; we're all in the same boat.

Medical knowledge is greater now than ever, and the increases in knowledge & technology are coming faster than ever, but they still don't know a fraction of what there is to know, or what we think they do/should know.

I'll stop rambling now....

Doc