Please help me find out why my left foot feels frozen,, especially the

Thank you, Barb. It is hard to know what to do.

I did have an appointment with a neurologist. He states that the problem is not norapathy, As he did it test to prove that. Do you think it is related to my cervical spinal problem for which surgery has been recommended.. Thank you for your response.

Hello Vivanne,
I have S.F. Neuropathy and Sojgren's Syndrome, I was wondering if you legs, feet feel like ice and feel burning in my legs feet and hands. Did you find anything to help that? I use Aspercream.

Not yet, and I hope they don't They are just cold a lot of times and numb , better when I wear compressions sucks. Left foot is more affected than the right.
Thanks for your post however.

Sorry: compression socks.

Good evening @vivianne777 It is great to meet you. I was here when you arrived in 2017. How in the world did I miss you then? The reason I ask is that I had spine surgery in 2016. I remember thinking that my recent reverse shoulder replacement had left me with pain and numbness in my arm. He requested imaging and was quite concerned when he realized that my situation was not a post-surgery result...it was from my cervical spine problems.

Within two weeks he had brought in a colleague and the cervical spine surgery was scheduled ASAP. In the image attached to this post, you will see how the titanium fusion material holds the vertebrae together. By the way, the reason you must wear the collar is to ensure that the fusion is solid and complete. All of this surgery for the shoulder, cervix, and three broken bones in my elbow were a result of falling off a platform and down the mountain.

Here is the outcome. The recovery was long and yet not unreasonably painful. What was a bit difficult was finding comfortable positions to sleep, ride in the car, and wash my hair. I seldom even notice my neck now. It is a bit tight turning to the right. And that is it.

Another of our mentors on Connect had cervical surgery without the titanium fusions. Let me introduce @jenniferhunter. She will probably understand a lot more than I do. Here is the link to her cervical surgery experience - https://connect.mayoclinic.org/comment/914620/.

Now you have some additional information about this surgery. Both @jenniferhunter and I stand ready to help you along with other Connect members who will step in and share their experiences.

One more thing @vivianne777, I was 76 when I had my cervical surgery. The only time I lost my temper was one night when I just couldn't sleep in the neck brace so I took it off and threw it as far as I could. That felt like a comfort release at the time. Of course, I replaced it. Do you have additional questions?

May you be safe, protected and free from inner and outer harm.
Chris

I too have the same thing going on. I fractured my sacrum years ago. I have had numerous procedures and nothing has helped with my issues. They have been more recently getting worse. I had an MRI last week. The report showed a disc bulge with right foraminal disc herniation impinging on the L5 nerve causing radicular symptoms. ( look that word up) it'll explain what we are both feeling.

Thank you for your response. It is very interesting to me, as I too fractured my sacrum on september nineteen. I believe these symptoms progressed shortly thereafter.
I had a lumbar MRI in which the sacral fracture was noted for the first time. However, a connection between that and the foot numbness has not been made yet.
The surgeon has requested a that a vascular study Be done before he will consider surgery.
He does not think the cervical problem or the neck stenosis contribute to the problem.
Rdiculapathy in the spine has been noted before.

@vivianne777 As both of these links describe, spinal cord compression (stenosis) in the neck can cause pain in other parts of the body and commonly the legs. Many surgeons miss this and don't connect the symptoms with this problem. I my case 5 surgeons missed it, and therefore would not help me. All of them could see the stenosis on the MRI, but they feared a poor outcome so they passed on my case. You can use this literature to discuss this with your surgeon. I don't know if that will help. If not, it may be best to see a surgeon who understands funicular pain. I found my surgeon at Mayo because when I saw the term "funicular pain" in his co-authored literature, I looked it up and realized my case was like this literature and I asked him for help. That was the best decision I could make. He was excellent and I no longer suffer.

At this link, you can find this information about "funicular pain":
https://www.spine-health.com/conditions/neck-pain/types-neck-pain

"Funicular pain tends to present as an achy, throbbing, or cold feeling in one of the limbs, such as a leg, or in the trunk of the body. It can also feel electric shock-like and similar to radicular pain (sciatica) going down the leg. Sometimes funicular pain is experienced when the neck is flexed forward, known as Lhermitte’s phenomenon, and results in a searing pain that can travel down the spine and/or into the arms or legs"

I had all the symptoms this describes including the electric shocks when I bent my neck forward when I had stenosis present prior to spine surgery.

Here is the medical literature I found that was a turning point in my case in finding a surgeon willing to help me (which I found at Mayo). At that time, there was very little published online about it and it was described as a "rare presentation" of symptoms.

Eur Spine J. 2011 Jul; 20(Suppl 2): 217–221.
Published online 2010 Oct 13. doi: 10.1007/s00586-010-1585-5
PMCID: PMC3111492
PMID: 20938789
"Cervical cord compression presenting with sciatica-like leg pain"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3111492/

As the spine-health link describes, you can have different types of pain at the same time acting on the spine. That tends to confuse the diagnosis when they cannot pinpoint the cause when several things may overlap and cause it. They cannot prove that you have funicular pain with a test, and the proof is when spinal cord decompression with surgery fixes that pain. That was my experience. I do believe this is more common than the surgeons believe because I talk to so many patients with cervical spinal cord compression who have sciatic pain. I did not have any other sources causing my pain as the nerve roots were not affected, and there was only one level of the spinal cord affected by a collapsed C5/C6 disc that formed bone spurs inside the central spinal canal.

I also experienced weakness and drop foot intermittently, sciatic pain, numbness, and tingling in my legs. The one thing that is a predictor of the possibility of funicular pain is when an epidural spinal injection takes away the pain. I had that experience too with one of the surgeons who later refused to help me. He didn't understand why the epidural took away all my pain, so he ignored the results. I think he thought it was supposed to prove otherwise as he wanted to assign the leg pain to a lumbar spine problem. Since my cervical surgery, I do not have sciatic pain at all and it has been several years.

The vascular study your surgeon wants is a good idea to rule out symptoms that could be caused by circulation. If circulation issues are found, he may not be able to distinguish those symptoms from spine generated pain. If they are not found, he'll be back to wondering why there is sciatic pain. He may not change his opinion about the neck not being a cause because he would have to admit he missed something if he is wrong. You may want to research some other surgeons now in case you need another opinion. If you can go to Mayo, my surgeon, Jeremy Fogelson, is very familiar with funicular pain and the success of my surgery that represented symptoms solely caused by funicular pain that he fixed only by freeing the spinal cord.

As I read through this entire discussion and that you've mentioned that possibly cervical vertebrae need to be removed, I'm not sure if you mean the entire vertebrae bones. For that you should see a spine deformity specialist and I know that my surgeon, Dr. Fogelson, has the expertise and knowledge that could really help you. Please reach out to me with any questions. I am convinced that the severe cervical stenosis is causing other symptoms with the legs. I can't make that diagnosis as I am not a doctor, but your description is a classic example of how this gets overlooked by surgeons. Cervical stenosis causes unsteady and uneven gaits when walking, balance problems, and bladder and bowel control problems that can progress to permanent incontinence if the spinal cord remains compressed. It took me 2 years and 6 surgical opinions until I found the right one with #6 at Mayo. I would have done the surgery much sooner, but no surgeon would help me until I got to Mayo. This is why I share my story.

Jennifer

Thank you for your response. I was not aware of many of these factors. Last night I did have a couple of electrical shocks along the right side of my neck. That really surprised me as I had not had them before. But the main problem is the feet which remain stiff and often cold. I will share what I can with my surgeon.
What do you think of spinal decompression aa a procedure?
This all began with extreme pain in my neck. I could not hardly turn my neck at all.