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Nerve pain after L4/5 decompression/fusion
I had an L4/5 decompression and fusion 3 weeks ago. I was pain free for the first 10 days. On day 10 I got a deep leg ache which over 2 days turned into severe nerve pain while laying down. It mostly goes away when walking or sitting. I am being told it’s normal and take more Lyrica. It’s in my leg that had NO deficits prior to surgery. Has anyone else had this happen? I am very discouraged, this does not seem normal at all!
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I’m a CT Technologist and am very aware of that. Why I’ve scheduled an appointment with my surgeon. Thank you!
@kwolverton62 Surgery creates a LOT of inflammation which is necessary for healing, and that is going to affect the rest of the body, so it is possible that the inflammation might aggravate something that had been asymptomatic. It doesn't necessarily mean that something else is wrong. For example, I have thoracic outlet syndrome (compression of nerves and vessels in neck/shoulder) and I went through cervical spine surgery and those issues are very close to each other in my neck and shoulder. The pain from my TOS did increase a lot and it made me crazy, and at that time I was not authorized for PT to the area because the spine was not fused, and surgery was done without hardware. I was dependent on the neck brace and good behavior to maintain the support for what was done in surgery. You may want to ask your surgeon about this. You may have pain generated from a level different from what was operated on, and if the other lumbar levels can move and rotate, there may be a muscle spasm affecting it that could cause pain.
Usually inflammation starts to kick in at day 2-3 after surgery, and builds from there. I heard that from a surgeon.
I have most of the issues you all are discussing. Took me 20 years to find the amazing surgeon to do my lumbar surgery. My disc fell out and the vertebrate self fused together! So the orthopedic surgeon took it apart because it was crushing the major nerve root exiting L3 L4 L5. When I woke up from surgery, it felt like somebody had stuck a screwdriver through the top of my left foot. I said what is this new pain so for six years now I’ve been saying what is this new pain in my left foot? LOL and everybody ignores me because nobody knows what it is. I got my life back with the surgery, but I also got a new pain after six years. Don’t have the pain every day so that’s nice and after six years, I don’t really notice the screwdriver stuck through my foot much anymore in my 20 years of waiting to get to a good orthopedic surgeon. There were many nerves that were damaged. It can take up to 10 years to fix themselves if they’re going to fix themselves at all I think that this screwdriver threw my foot feeling was a damage nerve , that woke up after the surgery. Six years after having this lumbar surgery, the discs and vertebrae and spine surrounding where I had the fusion laminectomy at all is now collapsing in on itself. So the screwdriver threw the top of my foot feeling could also be coming from things that were repositioned around meanwhile last summer I had cervical spine surgery, but the screws moved because my bones were too soft and they had to take me back for a bigger surgery on the backside of my neck and stick a rod down my back, so I focus less on the screwdriver stuck through my foot L O L. I think you need to give yourself time to heal surgical swelling takes a good two or three months to resolve and so there’s a lot of fluids in your body that may be pressing on nerves, causing pain and you might need to give it time to all settle down .