Chris, I moved your post to it's own thread... hope you don't mind.
Oh yeah.... WELCOME TO THE FORUM!!!
The patient community (and many spine surgeons) calls the new leg pain after surgery, "distraction pain". I call it surgery-induced leg pain. Your spine and the surrounding structures get reconfigured when the collapsed level is 'distracted' and an ADR (or fusion device) is implanted. There can be some stretching of the nerves or movement of or swelling of the surrounding tissues. A few weeks post-op is very early to be worried. I know it's impossible to relax and wait it out, but for most people, it fades relatively quickly. Sometimes days... often weeks or a few months... much less often many months. A few unlucky ones will take over a year and very rarely it's permanent.
If it's not getting better by the the 4th, you might ask your doctor if some anti-inflammatories could help. (Sometimes they'll get out the bigger guns and go to a prednisone 'dose pack' instead of the celebrex/mobic/voltaren/etc... )
Good luck... please keep us posted.
Mark
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