Welcome, dajazzman!

I can only agree with JoMar's posts. Surgery should be a last resort. It is invasive, and there can be complications resulting from it.

If you have responsibilities where you can't work at your own pace and take rest breaks as needed, you might want to consider surgery but even then, if it were me, I'd consider changing jobs before having surgery. I realize that that isn't possible in many situations though.

Welcome dajazzman.

Thanks everyone. I'm off on short term disability from work. I have 6 months which I don't know what I would do without it. My worst pain before I left was getting out of my work truck from the drivers side, computer work, and just standing without moving.

All of those actions have gotten better, but not fully.

2 years ago I had decompression surgery on left shoulder and two months after that is when I started having pain in my upper trap. My Orthopedic doctor said at that time it was just the trap muscle trying to do work of the shoulder muscle.

I thought about the pain last year at this time and it was just some soreness in my trap, but no numbness in the arm.

I'm thinking about going back to work and trying for three months and if it gets too bad just have the surgery in December.

I was just wondering how much pain everyone experience before they decided on surgery. I'm really concerned about Adjacent Segment happening and after having one fusion start a snowball effect.

I've had some back pain for years, but doing Yoga and chiropractor has kept it 90 - 95% pain free. I still have pain, but I'm so use to it that I don't even notice it most of the time. I may end up the same way with my neck pain.

I never tried Epidurals or pain management, do you think that might be a better option for now?