I had my 6 month followup appointment today with my neurosurgeon. Left in tears, some good news, some bad.

So the GOOD news..... my neck is healing, fusion looks good, and even though I wake up every morning in pain, apparently everything looks great. Mechanically speaking of course. Everything is lined up nicely and there are no bone spurs or spinal compression in any of the fused discs. My C4/5 still has some degeneration, but nothing that has progressed further in the last 6 months, and it is touching a nerve, that may be causing some pain, but it's not compressing anything. So that's all good. He told me that it takes a very long time after such a major surgery for your brain to redirect the signals to use new muscles after a fusion, and I'm still in the healing process. He is hopeful that I will continue to heal and hopefully have less pain as time goes one. And he's ordered some physiotherapy for me (finally) so that may help also.

Now the BAD news..... my neurosurgeon feels that I need another surgery on my right arm to correct the ulnar nerve compression that is causing so much pain, tingling and numbness in my hand and fingers. He wants to do an ulnar nerve transposition to fix a trapped nerve in my elbow. He was hoping that the neck fusion would correct my hand/finger issues, but since it did not he feels that I still need another surgery to fix that problem. I don't want another surgery. OMG, I'm still recovering from the neck fusion!! Is he out of his friggin mind?? And since this problem has been going on for almost 3 yrs now there are no guarantees that I will ever regain the use of my last 2 fingers, the pain, tingling and numbness in the last 2 digits may be permanent nerve damage.

So, I'm a 40 year old graphic designer that has no use of her hand. Just lovely.

I've asked for another EMG to verify his diagnosis, and told him I need time to think about all of this. So I have 3 more months off work to decide what I want to do. The other option I need to consider is dealing with the hand issue and asking worker's compensation to retrain me (free education at least) in something else. But I really just don't know what there is without use of my hand.

I'm overwhelmed thinking about it all... and the bottom line is I STILL HURT!!! All I want is the pain to stop. And that's not even an option at this point.

Anyone ever had an ulnar nerve transposition? What was the recovery like?

I think I'll go meditate and try to shut my brain off for a bit now. Too much thinking makes me weary.