In regards to your leg/calf pain I can offer some guidance based on experiences I’ve been dealing with. Without actually looking at the MRI and seeing it slide by slide it’s hard to give an accurate statement...
I crushed my L5s1 disk several years ago in a nasty injury along with L2/3 and my disks between C5-C7.
I’ve had a fusion at L5s1, laminectomy at L2/3, and fusion at C5-7 as well. These surgeries spanned about 2 years. I’ve had all the symptoms you’ve described. Leg burning pains from the glute down the right hamstring down to behind the knee, outside of the knee down the outer calf, and down into the foot as well. Also outside of the right leg down the band.
I tried all forms of physical therapy, neuro-therapy, injections, tissue massages, pain meds like every strength of hydrocodone, oxycodone, morphine ER, every other long lasting 12-24hr morphine extended combined with hydrocodone/oxy, tizanidine, lyrica, I’ve been on liquid morphine, etc etc etc. I’ve done stem therapy as well. NOTHING worked. I lost the use of most of my right quad and hip flexors, and I have drop foot as well. Had to learn how to crawl, walk, run, drive...had to learn how to use my left arm and hand again as well.
Surgery was my only option for pain. I saw one of the top 3 spine/neurosurgeons in the world (won’t give name on public Forumn). After the surgeries were done which I’ve stated spanned 2 years, followed by another 2 years of physical therapy (will be doing exercises for life) I’ve gotten to the point where I can rebuild again.
With the background out of the way my advice would be to find an extended release opiate/morphine based medicine as a base pain blocker for you. You need to see a physiatrist for this. This gave me relief in a way I can only describe as it took pain that felt like stabbing/burning from a sharpened knife off meds to the pain coming from a butter knife on meds. Which made my quality of life much better after a few weeks. Then they combined that with hydrocodone 10/325 every 4 hours. Which helped the spikes of pain do to pressure from the weather, falls, sleeping wrong, tweaking my back, etc etc. and at night I took tizanidine as a muscle relaxer which really helped me fall into a deep sleep. It helped with the muscle spasms I got as well from the nerves being compressed and the muscles being too tight.
Hope this helps to give you some guidance into what to do and where to look for help. The longer you wait the worse things will get. At that location fusion surgery is the only option I would go for. Disk replacement is too risky down the road if you’re going to continue being active due to the uneven pressure applied to the artificial disk from the curvature of the spine. I did a solid 18 months of research before surgery while exhausting every other option and talked to many patients of many surgeons before making my choice. I was fortunate enough to see a surgeon that deals with the Bulls, Bears, Sox, Blackhawks, etc etc. so the surgery was done knowing my lifestyle and building the surgery based on future goals as well.
Best of luck!
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