Hi Blue,

Your anxiety is perfectly understandable. If you are going to have surgery though it needs to be under control. Having your adrenaline levels up and your sympathetic nervous system charged up before surgery is not a good thing.

Only you know how livable this pain is. You have been having a hard time with it a while though or you wouldn't be here and you wouldn't be considering surgery. My concerns for you are the electric shock feeling and the thought that there may be bone spurs on the nerve. Bone spurs will not reduce on their own and there could be some arthritis caused by the hardware that makes those more prone to growing. If you are worsening then it makes it sense to go ahead.

Did you ever get a simple lidocaine injection at the point of maximal pain? Perhaps you could try that and see if numbing the area you think is a problem even makes a difference. The ketamine during is helpful like LItLove said and 900 gabapentin pre-op and minocycline for a week after reduce the chance of chronic pain.

I think ultimately you have to listen to your own wisdom. It depends on how uncomfortable you feel about having the procedure. If you are currently getting a strong no on this but go ahead and don't have a good outcome you may really beat yourself up over it. Try a little lido first. Put it off if you need to until you have a better idea if the pain is really worsening or if it is just a bad few days. Going into the OR conflicted and nervous sounds uncomfortable. Or maybe you just need to voice these your concerns and get in a more settled place with it and can go ahead. Trust yourself, breath deep and ask for peace and guidance in knowing what is best for you.

Sending healing love,