@jenn1969 One of my consulted spine surgeons was mentioning possible MS, and my neurologist explained that MS will make lesions in the brain and spinal cord that do show up on MRI imaging. There was none of that in my images. When they don't know what is wrong, they will look to another diagnosis like MS and he even wanted to do a spinal tap. I objected. Here is what a lot of surgeons get wrong, and this happened to me with 5 of the surgeons I saw. They could not connect the pain symptoms I had all over my body including my legs and gait disturbances with the spinal cord compression in my neck. All 5 missed the connection and correct diagnosis.

There is a condition called "funicular pain" caused by spinal cord compression that can send pain anywhere in the body below that level of compression of the spinal cord. Your surgeon mentioning referred pain may be suggesting this. If you have compression of a nerve root, that is predictable to exactly where pain would be felt, but the spinal cord moves and floats in fluid changing position and it may get contacted in different places at different times if you have cervical stenosis. There isn't a diagnostic test for this, but if you have a spine steroid injection that takes away all the pre-existing pain, that suggest this is possible. The proof is after surgery decompresses the spinal cord and it resolves this pain, that is the proof that it existed. That is what confused 5 surgeons before I came to Mayo.

If you want to ask your surgeon about this, it's best to do that before he makes a diagnosis that could miss it, because they don't want to be wrong and have a patient point it out. If you can give them this literature before a decision is made, that would be best and simply ask if it's possible your case could be like this? That puts them in charge of the decision. If they don't understand this, you'll also find that out and you may want another opinion. My only recourse to finding this after surgeon #5 missed it was to seek another opinion. No doctor at that medical facility would help me approach the surgeon with the new information. It wouldn't change what they decide to do surgically at all because they will remove structural issues of compression affecting nerves and the spinal cord. They do need to have confidence in understanding the problem completely before going forward to surgery. and you should expect that too. Here is the study.

"Cervical cord compression presenting with sciatica-like leg pain"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3111492/