@dstone501957 I'm not sure what procedure you are scheduled for in a few days, but it certainly sounds like it should be to address the issues at C5/C6. I am a spine surgery patient and had a ruptured C5/C6 with bone spurs and spinal cord compression. I had a fusion done single level with no hardware, with just a bone graft. I also have thoracic outlet syndrome and that makes one side of my neck tighter than the other and it can cause muscle spasms that begin to rotate cervical vertebrae, and it can throw off my jaw alignment like TMJ. That can cause jaw or ear pain if it is off enough to affect the nerves that pass through near the angle of the jaw. Since surgery, my neck has calmed down a lot, but I can cause a muscle spasm that can slightly rotate vertebrae, so I stretch to get it realigned again. TOS can be more common in spine patients because of injuries that can cause both problems. A physical therapy evaluation could define some of those issues. Blood flow to the brain can be affected if you have rotated vertebrae because the vertebral arteries run inside each side of the neck vertebrae and rotation would stretch them if if stays like that because of a muscle spasm. For me that caused vertigo and dizziness.

Surgeons do tend to think about just the spine, and compare symptoms to a dermatome map of where the spinal nerves go, but if you also have spinal cord compression, it can affect anything below that level depending on what gets compressed. I wouldn't worry about the chills. The surgery is based on the physical problem on the imaging, and that won't change. When you have an unusual symptom that a surgeon doesn't understand, it is easy for them to back out because they do not want a poor result from their surgery. That happened to me because I had pain that changed and moved all over my body because of spinal cord compression, and they wanted to suggest problems like MS. 5 surgeons turned me down. I found one at Mayo who understood this issue of the pain that I had called funicular pain.

If you don't understand what your surgeon is suggesting and why, contact them and get an explanation of what is shown on your imaging and how the surgery will address this. You have to live with the result of the surgery and it is a long recovery. This sets the stage for any other possible future spine surgeries.

What is the surgical procedure that you are scheduled for?