Hi everyone - new member looking for help
 

Hi Everyone,

I'm hoping that someone will be able to help me out. 2 weeks ago I had a discectomy L4/5, but as soon as I came round from the anaesthetic I had leg pain which has gotten worse and worse over the days. Instead of being in my lower leg/ankle area where it was before the surgery, it's now at my hip right down to my foot. Is this normal? Has anyone else experienced this?

I'd really appreciate your help or any information you can give me.

Thanks :)

Hello and welcome to NT!

I'm afraid that I don't have the expertise to answer your question, but I'm sure someone will come along who can.

The link to NT's Spinal Disorders & Back Pain forum is:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum22.html

Cheers

Have you had any luck finding answers to your questions searching the forum?

Cheers

Yes, thank you
 

Hi, Yes thanks. From what I've read and by digging about a bit on the internet, it looks like the pain I have now is due to nerve damage. Considering the nerve was crushed for almost a year, it's not surprising really. I was hoping for a quick fix with the surgery, but it seems I still have some way to go. Take care. :)

I suffered crushed and damaged nerves in an accident so I know it's a long road. In addition to the pain, I have a lot of neuro symptoms like tingles, loss of sensation (I've saved a bundle on oven mitts), spasms and weakness.

Nerve pain is tough to treat. What meds are you taking? Lyrica seems to be the drug of choice. It works for some folks, but I wasn't happy with it.

Cheers

Nerve damage
 

I'm the same - numb toes, weak feeling in leg etc. I can walk better than I did before the surgery, but am disappointed that I didn't get the "instant relief" I was told I would. Know what you mean about the oven mitts though - I have RSD in my left arm/hand which leaves me with "asbestos" fingers. I can pick up anything hot.

I take Gabapentin, Tramadol and Nortriptylene at the moment, all maximum dose, but I still have pain. I see my Surgeon on Monday for a post-op check, maybe he'll have some ideas. I've never tried Lyrica - I don't know what the equivalent to it is here in Scotland.

Thanks for your reply. :)

That's quite the cocktail they have you on. At the moment, I'm on that old standby Tegratol. It works better than the Lyrica, but things are a long way from sunny.

Cheers

hi scottish girl and hockey,
interesting posts.
i just thought i'd add that i have quite a bit of old nerve damage in one arm, found only two weeks ago during a nerve conduction study and then surgery a couple of days later where the neurosurgeon found an osteophyte and again the old nerve damage which the nerve conduction study had found.
He removed the osteophyte and did decompression which has helped with the excruciating pain and worrying numbness in my fingers but the neurologist prescribed gabapentin around the same time 300mg twice a day and 600mg at night and the two have worked well. the beauty of gabapentin also being that it's not addictive.

I took it for a good while and all I'll say is I gain weight and can't hardly get it back off.
Fancylady

Me too!
 

Me too! I did manage to lose around 14lbs but it took a long time to do it. Weight gain seems to be a common side effect of Gabapentin. Maybe one day they'll invent something that just does the job it needs to do, instead of leaving us with "little extras". :)

The weight gain is complicated. Before my accident I was a jogging, skiing, swimming, hockey playing maniac. Now I can barely move. My brain injury also changed my tastes: all of a sudden I was craving sweet food I would never have even looked at premorbid. The brain injury also caused depression and sometimes I feel that food is one of the few pleasures I have left. Take all that and add Lyrica and the results can be pretty dramatic. This year I'm going to write GOODYEAR on my butt and fill my long underwear with hellium so I can float over the Superbowl and watch the game for free.

SIGH

but fancylady
 

did it help with neuropathic pain?

Nerve damage is a hard one to correct...Lyrica has helped me the most, but I am on a pretty high dose. Any thought of a spinal cord stimulator mentioned?

Hi there. I had something similar to you with my back surgery. Before surgery my pain was in my left leg. Immediately after surgery the pain was in both legs. I asked my orthopedic surgeon about it and the first thing he said was "I monitored your nerve function during the operation and I didn't nick a nerve.". Talk about defensive. It was finally diagnosed as Peripheral Neuropathy although Failed Back Surgery Syndrome was also diagnosed.

Did you surgeon mention anything about nerve function during the operation. I don't know if that's anything that leaves a record such as a paper readout but it may be worth asking about.

Good luck with it. Hopefully your surgeon will be more helpful than mine.

Hi greggg
 

Hi Greggg, Thanks for your reply. The leg pain is still there, it just won't go away. They're now sending me to Physiotherapy to see if that will help. Personally, I think there is still a little fragment of disc floating around in there somewhere and irritating the nerve. The surgery took alot longer than expected as some of the fragments were hard to find so I've been told. They had to do quite a bit of digging around. I go back to see surgeon in a few months.

Your surgeon sounds alot like mine. He didn't mention anything about nerve function during the surgery, I'll be sure to ask him when I see him next. I'm kind of disappointed with the results - I'd hoped for some kind of relief from the leg pain. Did you have further surgery to see if that would help? That's another option that's been mentioned to me, but I'm not too keen on that.

Thanks again :)

Hi there Miss Scottish. That back surgery is some crazy stuff. Before my surgery all I could find is people who said they had it and it worked great. Now that I've had the surgery it's hard to find anyone who says it worked! If I would have know that I wouldn't have had it. My docs never mentioned follow on back surgery but that just may be because they know I won't do it. My surgery lasted nine hours and I didn't wake up for five days. I spent those days in ICU because of a drug reaction. Those five days just never existed to me. I was told by a few nurses that they almost lost me and that's when I said no more surgeries!

My ortho doc wanted me to have cervical spine surgery a few years ago to fix my arms and neck but I ran out of the hospital when I was registering. I just said that I can't do this and had them cut the wristbands off and out the door I went.

When they took your disks out, how did they do it? I was told it's easier to remove the disc if they go in from the front so now I have a scar that's 21 staples long to the side of my stomach and 19 staples in my back.

How are your medical facilities in Scotland? I'm in the middle of nowhere in Texas and I question how up to date our doctors are down here. I really think that how the procedure was performed had something to do with the outcome. You can talk to the doctors until you're blue in the face but the ones down here don't seem to want to get up to date on current practices.

Good luck if you go with another surgery. There's not many choices though unless you want to be on those darned drugs forever.

Take care...Gregg

Hi greggg
 

Hi Greggg, I know of people who've had the surgery 3 times before it worked, but others seem to have had a great result. Maybe I'm just a medical nightmare. 9 hours is a long time for surgery, and then to be ill afterwards, no wonder you don't want any more!

They did my surgery from the back, but things were a bit complicated so I've been told, so I ended up with a much bigger scar than I would normally have had. Doesn't matter to me, no one sees it anyway.

I live near a big teaching hospital and the facilities are pretty good. I wouldn't say they were bang up to date, but then Scotland never is! The USA always seems to be much further ahead in terms of treatment and knowledge. I think some doctors, especially the older ones, are a bit set in their ways and do their own thing regardless of new practices or treatments. They tend to stick to the tried and tested methods and they don't like people questioning them!

I would have thought you had it pretty good where you live. Do you have to travel far for hospital? Is there another way they could have done your surgery?

So, where does all this leave you? What happens next? Is there anything else they can do for you?

Questions, questions, questions - you'll be sorry you ever met me!!

Take care:hug:

Now Scottish Girl, I enjoy the questions.:) Sharing what this is all about sure helps. By the way...Merry Christmas. I hope you have a great one over there.

I never heard of the "oven mitt" condition you mentioned. That has to be pretty hard to get used to. I would imagine that would lead to many dropped tea cups. Is it hard for you to get used to or can you ever get used to it?

It's interesting to hear your view on the hospitals. I certainly agree that some fo the older doctors are set in their way and to me it seems that some of the other doctors just want to do as many of the surgeries as fast as they can when there may have been alternatives. Then again I guess they don't get paid for "alternatives". The best doctor I ever met was trained in Scotland and practices in the US and Kuwait. He wouldn't do us much good as he specializes in kidneys. I live about three and a half hour drive time to Houston but our facilities here are pretty good or so I thought. Looking back maybe they're not to good after all. The hospital actually lost me when I had my gall bladder out a few years ago. Not the bad kind of lost but they misplaced me. My kids were trying to find me after the surgery and the hospital had no idea where I was. My girls found me only because I'm 6'5" and my feet always hang off the end of the gurney. They saw my feet. Yep, quality medical care.

So now the question, where does that leave me? I'm done. I refuse to have any more surgeries and I had my doc take me off the morphine at least for now. I needed a break from that stuff. I don't sleep much because of the pain now. I've managed about 6 hours over the last 7 days and of course nothing helps to make me sleep except a shot or two of Bacardi 151 rum.

What's the latest on you now? I guess for most of us, pain relief is the main thing. Maybe Kadian would work for you. I don't think you have to worry about cost, do you? I have my insurance but the pharmacy forgot to run the prescription through my insurance company and the gal handed me the Kadian and didn't even flinch when she said "That will be $722." And that's for a one month supply.

Anyway...Just so you know, I visited Scotland in 1988 and loved it. It's such a beautiful country although I was a bit disappointed. I took the train to Inverness and rented a car to drive around Lock Ness but Nessie didn't make an appearance for me. I met some great people there but I did need an interpreter when I went to a pub. I had no idea what was being said but that's OK because they couldn't understand me either. I can't say enough about Scotland or the people.

Take care of yourself and let me know about your back, your hands and what they're going to try next for you......Gregg

Hi greggg
 

HI, I hope you and your family had a lovely Christmas. I can't believe it's over for another year.

I don't want to bore you with all the details, but if I explain a little bit about what's going on with me, it might become clearer. As well as having back problems, I also have Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy which is a chronic pain condition. This developed after elbow surgery, and now affects my left arm/hand. Part of the RSD is swelling, temperature changes, intense pain etc. I've lost a bit of feeling in my fingers so I have to be careful when I pick things up. I've dropped many a kettle, or hot dishes from the oven, so now I get someone else to do it for me. Too many burns is not good! The RSD has recently spread to my legs and I'm struggling right now with walking etc. I've had the disc problems for over a year now.

The surgery hasn't relieved much, if any, of my leg pain brought about by the crumbled disc, so I'm starting Physiotherapy in a few weeks to see if they can make any difference. I see surgeon after that and then who knows?! Anyway, enough of the boring stuff!

I can't believe the hospital "misplaced" you - how could they? You're 6'5 and someone that height isn't easy to miss. It's not good to forget about your patients.

You're right, I don't have to worry about prescription costs,
which is just as well, or I'd be skint by now. Although our healthcare system sometimes gets a bad press (which is justified at times), by and large the treatment and care is good. I find the older the Surgeon/Consultant is, the more like God they think they are. There's no denying they know their stuff, but I've come across 2 or 3 who are sadly lacking in the bedside manner. :rolleyes:

I'm sorry you're in so much pain - is there nothing else they can give you if you don't want morphine (apart from Bacardi). It's not healthy to have such little sleep, but I do know how you feel. I call it the "nightshift feeling" - I used to work nightshift and hardly slept. After 2 or 3 days of that, your head feels like cotton wool and the sick feeling is horrible. If surgery isn't on the cards, surely they could do something else for you?

I'm glad you enjoyed your visit here. Loch Ness and that part of the country in general is lovely. I visited there a few years ago, but sadly Nessie was unavailable that day. Sometimes the accent is a bit hard to understand - you have to "tune in" to that wavelength. Would you come here again?

Anyway, I've written a book and your eyes are probably rolling in your head by now. Talk to you soon. Take care. :D

Hey there...Happy almost New Years. I hope everything's well with you and that all our happenings in the pain world start to work out and get better for you in 2010. You mentioned that you've written another book with your post...well don't worry about it and keep on writing. I love to read and I know that even by just writing about things that are bothering us it sometimes helps relieve the pain a bit. So do you have big plans for NYE? I'm planning a quiet night here so I can stay off the roads where the crazy drunk drivers are but I just may have to visit my old friend "Bacardi" to help ring in the new year.

I told you about visiting Scotland and I would love to visit there again BUT my travelling companion is 100% wheelchair bound and that's where the challenge comes in. When we travel to the older cities and towns (such as New Orleans here) she finds that getting around in a wheelchair can be next to impossible at times. Doors aren't wide enough, etc. and things in general aren't too accessible. I can understand that because there's the historic aspect of buildings and you can't change things too much but that's something we learn to live with. I think of some of the castles I went to in Scotland and other places and I had a hard time navigating them even before I started having my leg problems. So right now, we're limiting our trips to where we can get to using her specially equipped van but you never know where we'll show up. If I could get back to Scotland, I would. I loved it there! I was so impressed, I named my youngest daughter "Heather". All we need to do is teach ya'll how to drive on the correct side of the road. That almost caused some big problems for me. Not so much in Scotland where the traffic wasn't bad but in London...ohhhhh boy...did I have fun. :)

I'm sorry to hear about your challenges with your RSD. I'm glad you have a place here where you can talk about it and people actually understand what you're saying. Maybe not all the medical aspects but I think all of us know about the pain. I hope they can get things better for you without the surgery. Anything but that!!! :)

Now it's getting close to what would normally be bedtime for a normal person but not for me. There's nothing more they can do for me as none of the drugs work so I just stay up until I pretty much pass out and sleep for about six hours. Ahhhhh the golden years!!! :)

I'm going to try to send you a PM here shortly. I've never done that so we'll see how good I am at the technical stuff.

Take care of yourself and keep writing those books. I think I'm doing the same. Talk to you soon!...Gregg