For at least the past 60 days I have been experiencing significant pain that begins in my foot and migrates up my leg to my hip. This pain only occurs when I am standing for more than a few minutes. Once the pain begins, it continues to increase in intensity. Within minutes of sitting down, the pain goes away. When I stand again, usually for the first few minutes I am fine, but within less than five minutes the symptons return.

I will add, I had a bilateral laminectomy in early May on L3-L4-L5 to eliminate cauda equina. My recovery through June was "great". In early July while working around my house, I tweaked my lower back and began having issues. In August an MRI confirmed I had again mildly ruptured a disc in L4-L5 area. This rupture is on my right side. All of the foot and leg pain described in my first paragraph is strictly on the left side.

I have been trying deep tissue massage therapy (lots and lots of knotted muscles in my lower left extremeties) and recently added chiropractic care as well. My massage therapist has observed I have lost the curvature in my lower back. Improvement in symptoms have been minimal at best. Since beginning of August my leg pain has decreased from mostly in my left hip, to now primarily driven the standing-related pain which as stated above, begins in my foot (mostly just below outside ankle bone), then migrates into my left outside calf muscle, and if standing long enough, into my left hip joint area. I have confirmed my gluteous minimus muscle is also quite tight. Piriformis does not seem to be an issue (through self diagnosis). Lastly, I mostly sleep on my right side as laying flat on my back or on my left side results in pain in my left hip.

I am 53, male, 6'5" approx 205 lbs, and until surgery at beginning of May this year, had been in excellent health all of my life.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Howdy and welcome.

Sure does sound like radiculopathy. Radiculopathy is the pain in the extremity due to nerve entrapment of the cervical and lumbar spin.

Interestingly, folks with cervical spine problems often have as their first symptoms, hand pain. See where I'm heading with this?

Have you tried anything else in terms of treatment? Maybe a short course of steroids and a Yoga class (wow, you can tell I pull from both sides of the medical fence...yoga and steroids!).

Jeff

Dear Dr Oster:

Wow, I am shocked at the speed of your response! I frankly didn't know what to expect, so thank you very much for such a quick response. I have learned long ago that traditional medicine isn't the only solution (and sometimes isn't any solution at all), so I appreciate your ability to think outside of the box.

I have taken oral steroids (multi-day course with declining dosage each day) (in July and again in August). During July it helped, in Aug didn't seem to help very much.

Last last week I discovered systemic enzymes and started taking them last night. I am willing to try anything at this point.

How, exactly would Yoga help?

Thank you again for your rapid response!

Ah, trust me. I'm not always that fast but you caught me on a good day.

Think of Yoga as a way to evaluate where your joints are inflexible and where your muscles/tendons are tight. Often the two go hand in hand; a bad joint will lead to muscles surrounding the joint that are tight. The interesting thing with Yoga is that while you learn the steps of Yoga you're learning about you. You're finding out areas that are tight, inflexible and that may need a bit of work. Once you've found those trouble spots, then you can customize your daily Yoga routine to address those issues.

And in all honesty, (I'm getting ready for the purists to throw rotten tomatoes at me) but sometimes you need to break the cycle with an anti-inflammatory or muscle relaxer. But use that medication as the bridge while you're doing the Yoga with the intent of just using the medication short term while needed.

Jeff

Thank you again for your response.

My wife keeps suggesting Pilates as an answer to my leg and foot pain. I have told her that in all my researching on the Internet I have never seen Pilates mentioned...any thoughts?

I've never taken a Pilates class before so I have no personal reference for it. But I think it would be a good starting point for you.

My understanding of Pilates is that it's Yoga with a strengthening component?

Jeff