My surgery was successful but recovering has been tough. I've been in physical therapy for 7 months now and with the help of Amitriptyline my pain is finally backing off. I'm still having headaches every day but They are way better. I had a very large fluid collection built up from ten years of it being misdiagnosed. The worst part of everything was the myelogram and cisternogram. The surgery was easy compared to that but I was very heavily dosed on pain meds. My advice is start physical therapy as soon as possible. I waited a couple months and think I set myself back by doing that.