Thank you! Yes, we're really enjoying living in Colorado.

Yes, I had a lumbar sacral MRI and a sacral plexus MRI, both showing moderate degenerative disc disease at L5-S1 with focal posterior annual tear, resulting in mild canal stenosis and approximation of the traversing bilateral S1 nerve roots.

Now, I get that it appears to be only mild canal stenosis, but the nerve is getting contacted by the disc bulge, and I didn't think you'd ever want that to happen, regardless of how mild or severe the contact is. What I'm also intrigued by is the fact that I don't have atrophy anywhere else on my right leg. It is just my calf. I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on television, but logic would dictate that if atrophy is only occurring in the calf area, there is probably an issue with one of the nerves or several nerves between my toes and my knee on my right leg. Yet no one has suggested using an ultrasound in that area to look at the nerves and look for any entrapments or impingements of any of the nerves. From my reading, I am suspecting it is going to reveal something with the tibial nerve. Another interesting item to note is that the MRIs show that the annular fissure and disc bulge is pressing on the left S1 nerve root, but my symptoms are occurring on my right side.

One more test they could try is taking a sample tissue of my calf muscle to see how it looks. Is it healthy? Is it not? Can it be healed/repaired?

I've actually never heard of a rehab doctor or MFR therapy. I am currently in PT, and my current guy is a DPT, trying to strengthen and rebuild mass, and I haven't noticed any real improvements with it yet. I've only been going to just over a month, so perhaps I need to give it more time. I don't know. Really what I'm looking for is an answer as to whether or not the time and effort to do all of this is going to result in fixing anything. I've read about permanent nerve damage and fatty atrophy that are permanent and scary because no amount of work or effort to repair/reverse them is going to work. I need someone to find out what the status of my calf muscle and nerves are.

I'll think about looking into MFR, but that may have to wait until I can get the answers to my questions above. I don't have an endless amount of money to keep throwing at treatments that "may" help resolve the problem. This is the 21st century, and I'm certainly not the only person this has happened to, so I can't understand why this appears to be so difficult to solve.