Zeke
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It was several hours of surgery, but I don’t remember much of it after the initial introductions. It went relatively well, but they didn’t pin the vertebrae in place and immobilize the spine post surgery as they do now and this resulted in a lot of chronic pain afterward. My doctor had me in one of those soft collars like they use for whiplash which didn’t do a lot of good (now they’re using those immobilizing collars like they use on accident victims with neck injuries and you can’t move your neck at all). After two weeks he wanted me to start removing my soft collar for short periods of time so my neck muscle wouldn’t go atrophy. After being a wrestler in high school I had an 18-1/2 inch neck wasn’t at all worried if some of it atrophied. I was more concerned about fusion movement before they set. I can’t buy an off the shelf, large, dress shirt at most major retailers because their neck sizes usually only go up to around 18” in their large size shirts. The neck healed, but I had steadily increasing pain for which I was up to 225 mg of morphine sulfate and 50 mg of hydrocodone a day. About 6 years ago I found radio frequency ablation which cauterizes the nerves transmitting the pain and has helped get down to 20% of the opioids that I was talking.prior to the procedure.newt said:I’m not a doctor but that doesn’t sound like it’s great. The very last thing that I’d hope for is a doctor paradox when my spine is involved. Hopefully everything worked out okay!