I met with a Physical Medicine doctor on Wednesday. After reading over my big ol' book of medical records, he isn't too sure how much he can help me. BTW, this guy was amazing....he read through everything in a very short amount of time (like less than 5 minutes). I thought he was just saying he read through it, but he seemed to know all the details! Well, he has ordered a hip and piriformis ultrasound to rule out/confirm piriformis syndrome. In some people, the piriformis muscle actually has the sciatic nerve running through/splitting the muscle. This is what the doctor will be looking for. To give you guys a little bit of a background on why they are looking at my piriformis muscle, I have had varying amounts of numbness from my hip to my foot ever since the first week of March. An MRI showed multiple levels of bulging discs in my lumbar spine and non-compressive sciatica. I always believed that the "sciatica" was really piriformis syndrome, so I guess I'll find out soon! Sciatica causes pain from you butt down the back of your leg. Piriformis syndrome can be very painful and causes numbness by the muscle spasming/pressing on the sciatic nerve. Luckily the numbness has gotten better ever since a cortisone injection in my hip last month! During my visit he did an exam and noticed that I have hyper reflexes. So, he would like for me to get another MRI. This one will be a thoracic & cervical spine MRI. He is not necessarily looking for bulging discs, but for something else like spinal stenosis or narrowing of the spinal cord. I guess having hyper/too fast reflexes is a sign of this. I'm hoping they don't find anything wrong and we can just use these tests as another way to rule things out.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment