L4 L5 herniated Disc with Right side systems

Do you have a doctor who believes this because I have suffered for 7 years with sciatic pain down my left leg and pain in the right back with a herniation on the right L4L5 disc. I need the name of a surgeon. I had left side surgery with no help. Now they aren't looking at the right side though that's where the disc bulge is. Julie

same here, doctors acts if my pain is made up i have DDD and spurs bulging disc on left but all pain goes to right side, she says my left wouldnt be causing right sided pain, tell that to my back.....

Hello Mammothgirl101. I have been diagnosed as having a herniated l5 and bulging l4. The disc. MRi pic showed the disc material crushed right side nerve and I hve numbness and initially pain in back and down the back of both legs. problem is left foot has toe drop and numbness showing l5 damage MRI according to WC docs. say Can't happen do you have a link to any diagnostic centers ? Only lay down type MRI done so far was told to get a standing by a Phys therapsit.

i also drive trucks and i am going through same thing with left side disc and nerve injuries but most not all of pain is right sided except burning and pins in left foot also. I have been to several drs and it is extremeley frustrating because they dont know what they are talking about and half of them were licensed in 1978 or earlier!!! they all think muscular when i have been doing therapy for 5 months and it has actuallyl gotten worse and weaker not better which if muscular they would have!!! Good Luck!!!! helping you paddle the boat!!!!

My doctors are saying it is all in my head. They say i have some arthritis and some in both hips too but that I have a slight pinched nerve on the left side and two bulging discs and that I shouldn't be having so much pain on my right side. He basically said it was all psychological and just hurt me to the core. I know how much pain I'm in and so does my family. I have become a recluse because most of the time I can't walk with out crutches, I'm about to lose my job and my insurance and I just don't know what to do anymore.I'm in pain all the time. This is horrible.

I actually had my disk start cutting into the nerve on L4&L5. I tried everything. The pain had gotten so bad   Down my left leg and I had so much loss of function in my leg that for 6 months I had to use a walker. I had to have a lot of care I am 32 so that was a very hard thing for me to handle. Towards the end i was on morphine at home because the pain was so severe.I had the surgery and it was the best decision of my life. Same day of surgery I got off the bed and could walk on my own with no leg pain. Don't try all the options they give you, they don't work and you'll be out a lot of money. 

In an industrial country such as USA, yes, there are many broken people, lower back problems are common for those who worked with their bodies. All twists, turns, bends and crouching, with or without carrying weights apply pressure to the lower back. So far Surgeon General of the Army told me not to go for surgery on account of 50% chance of not being able to walk anymore. Seize any impact activity such as sports involving jumping, running and weight lifting. No weight carrying above 20lbs..
Chiropractor & Ibuprofen (up to 800mg as needed, usually prescription). As for my trucking career, never took off anyways.

No corporation that broke you wants to pay for fixing you anymore. Chiropractors offer a temporary relief, injections may last a month or three, certain exercises to relieve the pain immediately, but that's all. Go for an MRI, it will tell exactly where it is.

I just had an mri and it shows at L5-S1 I have disc bulge and a superimposed left forminal pertrusion which moderately narrows the neural foramen and abuts the left L5 dorsal root ganglion. both lower extremities are numb back of leg down to bottom off feet to big toes......but all of the pain is on the right side infact im actually bruised on the rt side of back down side of leg. the neurologist said that this has nothing to do with the left side Dx. now he wants me to have an emg on rt side. to make sure there is no nerve damage. im very confused. i also have urinary retension. any suggestions?

I have a similar problem. Lumbar spine problems are all on the right side, but the leg most affected is my left. The right leg has moderate symptoms, but minor pain compared to the left side. I'm also a long termer with this problem, now well into my 7th year of pain. My most recent neurosurgeon told me I could try a neurostimulator implant made by Medtronic or go to a pain management clinic. I chose the implant which gave me about 10%-20% relief in the groin area. Unfortunately that pain came from a left hip replacement so there's no tie in to my back symptoms. I know that the sciatic nerve runs under one of the buttock muscles, but an MRI was done of the hip area and nothing shows up - no impingement, no stretching of the nerve, nothing. Recently my femoral nerve has gotten involved with anterior thigh pain and severe pain of both knees, but I may get some relief here since the back symptoms are both central and left sided at L3/4. The major right side back issues I was referring to in the beginning of this write-up was prolapsed disc at L4/L5 impinging L4 nerve root - right side. Pain is chronic, as with other people discussing similar problems, but intensity can vary greatly. The biggest problem right now is that both knees become so painful after walking more than a few minutes that I've had to stop walking for exercise altogether. Have an appointment coming up, I hope, with an orthopedics specialist who also specializes in spinal surgery. There's a chance that the hip operation somehow plays into this mess, but I don't think so because the prosthetic hip was installed 3 years ago and, as mentioned above, most of this problem is into its 7th year. Cannot understand why so many people have this issue and no doctors seem to know how to treat same. Truly sick of all this.

I have one suggestion even though I previously wrote a "guest reply" essentially stating that I have a problem similar to yours - back symptoms predominantly on one side of spine while leg pain is mostly or entirely on the other side of your spine.

My suggestion is to see a neurologist as an interim measure. I did this early on and gathered a ton of information, but at the time I didn't know I had the opposite back/leg problem. Now that I've gotten considerably worse and know what I'm up against (not being able to get surgery to wholly or partially take care of the leg pain), I'm going to make another appointment to see him again. Although I currently live in Australia, I'm originally from the U.S. and these doctors basically are trained in both countries to know virtually everything about nerves, how to analyze and resolve problems, etc. There is no guarantee that he or she will come up with an explanation for what's happening, but there's a reasonable chance. As far as scans go, I've had nearly all types as well as epidural injections and none of them have given the surgeons the info. they want or need to proceed. You've likely had many of the same scans (some of these have been done multiple times) CT, MRI and Myelogram. If you have a recent MRI that shows all of the lumbar areas, that should be all you need for starters, although if you have many scans, he may want to see them all. From purely a pain perspective, I would avoid a Myelogram if at all possible, even though it provides a lot of detail. Has to do with injecting a dye into your spinal cord thru one of those long, super thin needles. The dye will spread into all the nerves and their branches from the injection point and downward. Although the injection is okay, as the dye moves into the nerves it creates a good deal of pain that lasts for a while. Reason I had this done is because the surgeon wanted a fresh scan and I can't have MRI scans anymore because I have a spinal stimulation implant (which essentially was only 10 to 20% effective).

Receiving an MRI could fry my insides so I had no choice but a Myelogram to get detailed pictures. In any event, consider finding a good neurologist, get a referral letter, if needed, make an appointment and explain the situation as best you can. Again, having your scan(s) and the radiologist summary for each will help him or her. FWIW, I used to see see a chiropractor, who's also a friend, until my situation became so bad that I can now barely walk. Recently, I took in my Myelogram results and the radiologistwrite-up and after a fair amount of studying, his conclusion was to repair what is obviously wrong with the back (either a partial surgery or repairing everything that's wrong in one go). If this doesn't go against your surgeon's ethics, it might work. I just thought of something else too. All my epidural injections were on the left side, exactly at each level (and this is my painful leg side too). Only one of them helped and that was at L3 which coincidentally is the only level that shows neural anomolies on both the left and right side of my spine. I didn't think of it until just now, but if some or all of us who are caught up in this unusual situation had epidural injections at the exact levels and on the same side as where the back problems are, if there's no correlation between them and the opposite leg being painful, the injections shouldn't help the leg pain. But what if the surgeon agreed to trying this and the leg pain temporarily got better. This is just a wild ass thought but I'm grasping at straws after so many years of misery and being told no go. Anyway, to sum it up, a neurologist could be the one person who could find an answer, even if it's one that explains what's happening, but offers no hope of relief. I'm not giving up until no one will see me any more. Good luck.

I have just the opposite problem. Herniation on the right and pain on the left. My doctor has suggested that I go to have steroid injections and return to his office next month. Is it a possibility that my left side is more sensitive that my right side? The last time I had injections in my back it felt like someone poured hot grease down my left leg. If they did injections on both sides why did I only feel it on the left?

I'm having a problem similar to that have had the herniated disc since 96 on left side. Lately I'm having right leg numb tingling difficult standing without pain. I do hip hop classes at the Y and have to keep those up because of my heart problems. I have had Mrs on left and can't go through another one of them but want to know if it's possible to have herniated disc on both sides

I had back fusion surgery for spondolyosis & disc replacement L5S1. I had all the hardware in & terrible pain afterwords . I am a very small build and I could feel the hardware in my back . None of this took my pain away I still suffer with radioculpathy pain and extreme lower back pain. This was a very involved surgery 8 inch incision and all the hardware which I had to have removed a year later . It's been 10 years and I am still in pain. I just had a new MRI which showed a new disc bulge L4 pressing on the nerve root so more pain ! But I will not have surgery it did not help me the first time ! I still suffer to this day . I hope this information helps you in someway .

How did surgery go? Did this fix the right and left sided pain?