[EUBlink]

TLDR / I had neck surgery, nerve pain has already come back. Share your less fortunate and/or funny surgery experiences if you don't want to read about mine.

I was hurt on-duty during the second half of last year... herniated discs that caused me to lose feeling in my left arm below the elbow and also brought constant, throbbing nerve pain from my spine, across my back/shoulder and down to my elbow. All fun and games until I need that left arm/side to be stronger when/if I'm in a fight, which happened several times. In the midst of all of this, I only missed three days of work from the end of September to the day of surgery, which I'll get to. Anyway, I went through nerve meds which were a nightmare, followed by PT that would help for a couple of hours each session, then had nerve blocks on three separate occasions. No luck with any of it, at least any relief that lasted more than a couple of hours. A couple weeks before surgery, I was in a foot pursuit that ended with me tackling the guy and landing rough/hard myself. He went to jail puking, as it was a long pursuit. I was hurting but I shrugged it off to the running. I was wrong. The doctor advised we go ahead with the final option, which was surgery.

Last month, I had ACDF surgery... anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. If you aren't familiar, the simpler way of describing it is that the doctor made a 2.5-inch incision on the front right side of my throat, then went in and removed the damaged disc. At that point, a cage was installed between the vertebrae, followed by a plate that was screwed in to keep the cage in place. All of this is permanent. While in there, he found that a piece of the disc had broken off and was "floating" and had been causing considerable pressure on my spinal cord. Not sure how all that works, really. He's the doctor, I'm the guy hurting.

I'm almost at three weeks post-surgery now, and the symptoms that the surgery was supposed to alleviate and hopefully eliminate... they've come back and with a vengeance. While I can feel my left arm where it used to be numb, now the throbbing nerve pain has extended down the arm as well. The majority of the pain pulses around the area I believe the plate is. I go for my first follow-up on March 12th, so I'll have more answers then.

My purpose for posting is to see if anyone on OS has had the same surgery or similar, and your results. And while we're at it, we'll turn this into a constructive topic and discuss crazy surgeries we've had. I'll get into how I bit my tongue off earlier in my life later on. Fun times.