Hi. I am a new member to this forum. I had acdf surgery to C5-C6 and they took my graft from my neck. I am just looking for people to chat with who had similiar surgeries. I had my surgery just this past Saturday after dealing with tremendous pain, numbness, tingling to my right side. It had gotten so bad I was hospitalized for a week. They thought I had a stroke because I had speech problems too. I was sent home and then saw my primary and still had too much pain AND had bowel and bladder problems. They cathed me and sent me back to the hospital where I was taken to surgery for a herniated disc at C5-C6. From what my NS said, the nerve was bad. SO I am not even a week post op. I was only overnight after the surgery. I came home, dealing with the post op pain but no weakness or numbness. I have some shoulder blade pain. They gave me a soft collar. I can only take it off when eating or doing personal care. I have my follow-up next week. I am a nurse who now has no job because I hadn't been employed long enough for FMLA. I can get disability though. But everyone tells me not to worry about things like this. I need to heal first.
I hope I made the right decision and that this surgery works for me.

Hi Callie,

Welcome to NeuroTalk! I'm new also, and still learning my way around. Hope you are healing well and will have much less pain soon. I had a spinal fusion 12 years ago with kind of mixed results, but wasn't able to return to work and still deal with daily pain. I'm hoping to get a spinal cord stimulator soon, though, and maybe that will block the pain to some degree.

Anyway...glad you are here and hope you're having a good day today!
Jan

Im new here too. 3 months post op on ACDF C-5,6,7. I had the shoulder blade pain too, which I joked to everyone that it felt like I had been shot. I does hurt tho, but that part of my pain has subsided a lot. For the most part I am glad I had the surgery, but on days like this after I have done something simple like clean the house I wonder if I will ever get better. I mostly have residual nerve pain in my arms, and muscle spasms in my shoulders and neck. I have most of my ROM, and have not done PT. I still have high hopes, and have to keep telling myself that it all takes time. hope you are feeling better soon!