I have learned that to convince doctors that I am looking for pain relief, not drugs to enjoy, I tell them that I do not WANT to be taking painkillers, but that I am disabled by pain. Vicodin is just a painkiller for occasional breakrhrough pain that a regular painkiller (an opiate) cannot handle. The long-time science writer for the New York Times wrote about how she had to convince her doctors to give her more than vicodin when she had her knee surgery. Search for this story on pain management by going to www.nytimes.com and searching on "Jane Brody pain management knee replacement". For more articles on how it will need 10 times more pain reliever indefinitely if you are not given more painkillers now, when it may still be possible to prevent this from becoming chronic pain, search on the same thing minus knee replacement. This is the only newspaper in the country I know of with expert journalists in following the latest treatment of chronic pain drugs.
Where is the "regrow cys(T?)" that is on your neck. Has anyone peformed tests to see what it might be pressing upon and if that could procuce pain? Have you kept a daily log of how bad the pain is, what tasks you had to skip, what events you could attend, but not enjoy? How much sleep did you get? What was the longest times you could sleep? Sometimes showing a few weeks of nice notes helps. I hope you have been clear to your doctors on how it began, when it began, how rapidly it got worse. Is it muscle spasms (cramps in muscles) or something similar?
As glennataj so acutely points out, having one prohlem does not rule out having 2. I am disabled becaue nobody knew after blowing off my pain, that it was so severe.
You have good patience. Use it to say to people you are really worried that you haven't effectively communicated your pain level. Use your patience to communicate to the doctors. My neice is in teh same shoes as you, she lives cheap, and has not sucessfully convined them that she wants relief more than drugs.