A 76-year-old man woke in the night with a sharp, intense pain in his left calf that he rated 8 out of 10. Over several hours, the pain spread down to his ankle and foot. His leg was swollen and hot, and his calf and lower leg felt numb and tingly.
Those symptoms can signal a deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot in a deep vein that can break loose and travel to the lungs. But an ultrasound found no clot. An MRI instead revealed a rare condition called denervation pseudohypertrophy, in which a muscle enlarges after losing part of its nerve supply because fat builds up inside it.
