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| I feel your pain ... neuropathetic pain is very difficult to endure.
In 2008 I underwent an Anterior Cervical Decompression & Fusion surgery at C4/C5 to relieve a compression of the spinal chord, a secondary aim was to clean-out some space to relieve pinched nerve roots. In my case the chord compression left me with little choice but to have the surgery as the resulting neuro pain extended pretty much everywhere and had wore me down to the point I weighed only 125 lbs soaking wet. As DairyMan78 described cervical fusions are not very much fun but if you happen to be among the lucky ones you just may improve your situation ... at some point the natural thing is to try surgery and hope for a good outcome. I see a lot of the unlucky ones at the pain clinic so surgery is risky no doubt about that.
If you've not done so already, I would recommend you have yourself referred to a Neurologist if only to more precisely narrow down what is causing your symptoms, the Neurologist may have some further tests done such as a nerve conduction study, different sorts of neck and brain MRIs among other things. In my experience any NeuroSurgeon that you may eventually be referred to will require a lot more than just an MRI, at least I'd hope they would.
As to my experience so far ... I can relate with how dairyman78 described his recovery ... the surgical trauma was extremely painful for the first week then sort of tapered off from there, it's true that it takes a good year for damaged nerves to heal and if they do things start to improve. In my case the chord decompression immediately relieved pulsating current that was the norm before surgery but it was over a year before my neck/shoulder/arm issues began to improve. I actually felt pretty decent after a couple years but since then things have been slowly relapsing. At no point since the fusion have I been able to work, vibration or doing anything very physical with my hands/arms brings on a string of very bad days. My range of motion is surprisingly good, a lot better than I expected, again the passage of time really helped in this regard, the one motion I really cannot handle is to try and look straight up to the top of a silo or something like that. Eight years post fusion I'm now having to start the diagnostic process all over again, last couple of years have been tough going.
A muscle relaxant such as DIAZEPAM aka Valium can be a useful tool, I know a few mgs causes my neck muscles to "let go" of me when I'm having a bad episode. If you have access to a good pain management clinic that is something worthwhile considering ... any treatment that can help relax those muscles will help however briefly....trouble is us rural folk end up driving long distances for a lot of these services which really limits their usefulness.
Best of luck on your journey down this road ... hope things improve for you.
Edit to add that everyday use of Tylenol, ibuprofen, is really not something my primary care doctor encourages at all. There are a range of other meds that may help, this is where a good Pain Management Clinic can help, there's options out there besides Opioids by themselves. Even in the the world of Opioids there are a lot of options available.
Edited by kawartha 10/20/2016 17:26
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Pinched nerve
