Sometimes you can mark someone's name by mistake as someone whose posts you don't want to read, and then their posts aren't visible to you. I don't remember how this is done or how to correct it, but I am copying PV's message into my own post in the hope that you will be able to read it there. This is her message:
Gosh, you sound just like I did last year. My husband was hospitalized for 45 days last year, during which time he was diagnosed with both c-diff and crohn's colitis. He lost about 45 lbs in the hospital, and lost a lot of muscle mass, and was pretty malnourished. He also had to wear those stockings to prevent clotting since he was bleeding so much, and his platelet count was high. My husband developed a complete food drop in his left leg - so if had to walk, he had to pick up his foot altogether, he couldn't flex his foot in order to walk.
We went to the neurologist, and she did a nerve conduction study (about 1 month after foot drop developed, and about 15 days after he started feeling better, and he was able to eat some solid food). The nerve conduction study showed severe slow-downs on his left side, but it also said even his right side was slow. Also, since a pinched nerve in the spine can also result in the foot drop, she did the nerve conduction study along his spine as well, to rule that out. So, she gave him an initial diagnosis of demyelenating polyneuropathy, which scared us, given that what got him better was remicade, which can cause demyelenating diseases. So, then, to figure out whether to continue to remicade or not, we got a head, neck and spine MRI to see if there were any lesions indicating the development of multiple sclerosis. Thankfully, there wasn't any indication of MS, so we continued with the remicade. We took the approach of conducting a nerve conduction study after every remicade infusion, to see if his nerve conduction issues got worse. In the meantime he went to physiotherapy.
It's taken about 1 year, in order to regain about 75-80% recovery in function - he now walks normally and can run etc with no issue. Also, over time, as we repeated the nerve conduction studies, we only saw improvement, and everything went back to normal ranges about 3 months after his hospital stay. The only region where there were problems, was the peroneal nerve bundle (which if damaged can result in a foot drop) - so that's what we conclude happened to my husband - the sudden severe weight loss, his tendency to cross his legs, combined with the tight circulation stockings he had to wear, probably damaged his peroneal nerve bundle, and with better nutrition, and physiotherapy, his body slowly repaired the damage.
It sounds like your husband has some back issues - has he been checked to ensure that it is not a pinched nerve in his spine that's causing the foot drop? That's a very likely common scenario. I hope this has been of some help to you.
PV
Husband with Crohn's
Diagnosed March 2003 Ulcerative Proctitis
Diagnosed March 2008 Crohn's & C-diff, hospitalized 45 days
Canasa, Lialda, Remicade, VSL#3, Florastor
In Remission since June 2008
Stopped vancomycin for c-diff Jan 1 2009
C-diff free, and in crohn's remission, knock on wood