I had an emg and just worried?!

An EMG is one of my favorite procedures also (not)....

First, I'd consider seeing a Neurosurgeon rather than an Ortho. The reason he asked if you had and EMG done previously is he was looking for a baseline comparison, but you should know how your leg was before surgery and now, 8 months later. If there's been no change, or it's getting worse, and it's the leg that was affected by the disk, then it's a problem. If your surgeon screwed up the procedure (and trust me when I say it's always a distinct possibility), the second Ortho isn't likely to dump on him, particularly if they're in the same medical system. It took 10 years for me to discover (with a new surgeon) that my first 2 fusions (C5/6/7, L4/5/S1) weren't done correctly. After first seeing my pics, his first words were "Is there any litigation pending on this?" Needless to say I was stunned, and it's the reason my pain is so bad now. My point is, we're all taught from the cradle to trust doctors at their word, and in my experience, that type of thinking can get you killed (it nearly did me).

Trust your gut feeling - after 8 months you should be fully healed, or at least really close if you just had a diskectomy and not a fusion with it. It took about 6 months after my second fusion to notice the pain increasing further. For 6 years I believed it was just the nature of my problem and the surgery, until I found out otherwise.

I think you're right to worry; unless he just missed the nerve, there's obviously something not right. Typically your leg will kick pretty good when stimulated right. One thing a Neurosurgeon will do if your Ortho didn't is also do a nerve stimulus test on your legs and feet.

8 months isn't really enough time for scar tissue to build up to a point where it's pressing on a nerve, and unless it was a microdiskectomy, they'd normally evacuate some tissue around the vertebrae to allow for scar tissue and to ease the pressure on the nerves. The other thing is that 8 months

The other reason to get a different opinion from a Neurosurgeon is that if your operation was done incorrectly, you need to find out sooner rather than later. Not just for medical reasons, but for legal ones as well; most states have a statute of limitations for taking legal action, and it usually starts when you first find out, but not always. As I said, learn not to trust them at their word.

As far as the foot swelling, if you're taking an NSAID, that's not uncommon, though without knowing what you're taking it's hard to determine. There are a lot of meds that we take for back pain that can cause swelling.

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