What's up with my leg?

April 17, 2008 5:27 PM

Medical Filter. Recently (in the past month or so), one of my legs seems to have either grown longer than the other one, or one has shrunk.

I walk around with a bit of a limp, and my right foot slaps the pavement. It doesn't hurt at all. Additionally, when I run or play tennis (I'm in a weekly league), my toes on my right foot get numb and prickly, like when your leg or arm goes to sleep. Then, today, I went running but had to stop because my right foot was starting to hurt. Now, about an hour after running, I'm sitting here behind the computer, and I notice that the back of my right leg, sort of between my calf muscle and my ankle, is feeling a bit numb and seems to be filling with water. Not a lot, just a noticeable swelling compared to my left leg. Again, it doesn't really hurt, but it does feel and seem odd. Obviously, I'm going to try to get an appointment with the doctor tomorrow. Until then, any ideas what might be going on with me?

posted by billysumday to Health & Fitness (11 answers total)

You should absolutely go to a doctor as soon as you can. Your foot slapping the pavement sounds to me like a drop foot, which could be a result of a number of different things, all of them doctor-worthy. It could be a nerve injury in your leg, something going on with your spine, or a number of other things.
posted by jennyjenny at 5:41 PM on April 17, 2008

...my toes on my right foot get numb and prickly...

That would have me a bit concerned. Could be anything, I'd see a doc.
posted by meta_eli at 5:44 PM on April 17, 2008

Third that. Go to a doctor. I had that slap foot, but only after my left leg came out of a cast after breaking my fibula (tibula? whichever is the small one) mountain biking. My slap foot was obviously from 6 weeks of immobilization, but yours should be looked at. It might turn out to be a pinched nerve from inflammation or injury, but don't be stupid, play it safe and go see someone.
posted by Rafaelloello at 5:54 PM on April 17, 2008

My non-physician comment: These sound like symptoms of something impinging the sciatic nerve. Definitely not something to delay about. Get to a doctor tomorrow - through an ER if necessary. Don't make an appointment for next week sometime.
posted by megatherium at 5:55 PM on April 17, 2008

No doctor here, but think "traveling blood clot". Go!!!!!
posted by Rafaelloello at 5:57 PM on April 17, 2008

the back of my right leg, sort of between my calf muscle and my ankle, is feeling a bit numb and seems to be filling with water. Not a lot, just a noticeable swelling compared to my left leg.

Emergency room. This happened to a friend of mine and it was a clot, and if he hadn't gone in it could have killed him. Go.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:02 PM on April 17, 2008

I knew this old man, an Australian in his mid-seventies at the time. A really colorful character: he had served in WWII with ANZACS, converted to Islam late in life, and then lived for decades in Turkey more or less as a hermit, writing reams of sonnets and anagrams and such. He had a seriously gimp leg and walked with a cane; it seemed six inches shorter than his other one. One day I asked him where he was stationed in the war when he was wounded. Turns out it wasn't a war injury. One leg just started getting shorter, he never really had it examined, being in rural Turkey on a meager pension, it kept getting worse, until he wound up as I saw him, hobbling on a cane. So yeah, you might want to have it looked into. He made it 30+ years without a doctor though, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it between now and your appointment tomorrow.
posted by BinGregory at 8:07 PM on April 17, 2008

You have likely did something that tweaked your back muscles / abdominal that caused your pelvis to tilt. Used to happen to me a lot. It causes one leg to become shorter than the other, and in my case my pelvis also twisted if I didn't get it treated quickly. Said another way it would tilt up on one side and then twist a bit too shoving one hip out forward farther than the other.

My chiropractor was the only one that helped me. He showed me special exercises to strengthen the small connective muscles deep in the spine and provided relief through spinal manipulation. I've not had those problems in a while... but when I did, it was exactly as you describe.

Best of luck,
J
posted by jseven at 8:31 PM on April 17, 2008

A rotated innominate -- the pelvic tilt jseven is probably talking about -- wouldn't cause a foot drop. When you get sudden muscle weakness, which is what a foot drop is, you need to see an MD to rule out neurological causes before you go to the chiropractor. If you went into the office of a good chiro with these symptoms, he would send you straight to an MD.
posted by jennyjenny at 8:43 PM on April 17, 2008

jseven appears to be describing what my friend had. It wasn't that his leg was shorter; it was that his hip was tilted at like a 45-degree angle.
posted by BinGregory at 8:47 PM on April 17, 2008

Hopefully you've gone to the ER by now. However, just to throw my two cents in, my father broke his hip and it was broken for at least a month before we discovered it (he suffers from Lewy-Body Dementia, so not a lot of mobility or communication going on there) -- and one of the things that called our attention to it was one leg seemed shorter than the other. The other was me asking him how much it hurt on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain he'd ever felt, and him croaking out "10, 10, 10, 10" -- but that's another story.

You likely do not have a broken hip, but I just wanted to emphasize that there are a lot of serious things this could be a sign of, and you should take this very seriously.
posted by davejay at 12:57 AM on April 18, 2008