Enormous amount of swelling in the foot

[Mark Wilkinson]

I have a friend who has been dealing with an issue on and off for a few years now and wanted to get some opinions.

Every once in a while ( once or twice a month ) his left foot/ankle will start to swell up. This is accompanied by some discomfort, but nothing huge. It gets to the point where he can't put his shoe on. The swelling extends from just above his heel up to about the bottom of his calve. So far the doctor he has seen has no idea. They have done x-rays, MRIs, and a few other scans I can't remember and they all turn up nothing. He is in fairly good shape but doesn't do any sort of exercise other than lifting weights.

Any thoughts? Any questions I can ask him to better define the problem? He is going to start a search for a specialist. His grandmother had a condition where her arm swelled up until it was uniformly the size of a small grapefruit from shoulder to hand, he is wondering if this is his case as well.

Thanks for anything any of you can come up with.

 

[SillyC]

Uh, stay out of it and encourage him to keep following up with his doctors. This sounds like a vascular or a kidney problem to me, not an orthopedic one.

 

[Dr. Mark]

sounds like mild venous insufficiency, where there is some dysfunction in the valves return blood to heart. if not painful and it goes away....no big deal.

again this is hard over email

Mark