@jds54
I am in my mid 50s and can relate with your story. I was misdiagnosed for so long and not treated for cervical degenerative myelopathy which caused many symptoms at/below my C5-C6 level. I had ACDF surgery in 2022 and it helped relieve some symptoms. I also had lumbar surgery L3-L5 in 2024. I am having ACDF on C6-C7 due to new herniated disc hopefully in May, too.

Besides pain, do you have numbness and weakness in arms/hands/legs/feet and do you have any bladder/bowel control issues? Do you notice handwriting changes or do you drop things often?

@jds54
I also meant to ask if you had been to a neurologist for EMG/nerve conduction studies of your upper and lower limbs? What did it show? Do you have cervical spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease/disc bulges or herniations, bone spurs/osteophytes, and does it show compression/flattening of your spinal cord/signal changes?

I have not had surgery yet. I guess that is next. Everyone is telling me that these new ones are a lot more effective and less down time. My orthopedic surgeon wanted to go in and do a fusion surgery while one of the other Doctors I was seeing say I wasn't there yet. The one thing I have learned was if you have this type of pain issue. See a Neurosurgeon not a orthopedic surgeon.

@jds54 I think you are on the right track. I did have funicular pain and that was when many doctors didn't understand that this type of pain existed, so I have made it my mission to communicate this because surgeons miss it. 5 surgeons missed my correct diagnosis even though they all read the imaging. It was because I read literature from a surgeon at Mayo, and then looked up the term, "funicular pain" and that lead to medical literature with cases like mine. I had been rejected 5 times, so I sent that literature to Mayo with my request to be seen by that surgeon who was Jeremy Fogelson.

Yes, the spine surgery cured all my pain which proved that it was the funicular tract pain. There is no diagnostic test for this, but if you had a steroid spinal injection that resolved pain temporarily, it does predict the possibility of funicular pain. I had pain all over my body caused by spinal cord compression from a collapsed C5/C6 with bone spurs in the central canal. I did not have stenosis in the foramen or spinal cord compression anywhere else. I walked with a limp, had trouble emptying my bladder, and was losing the coordination in my arms. I do believe the surgery will help you but not knowing if there is any permanent damage to the spinal cord, I don't know if you will still have pain after your surgery. There will be pain of course from the surgical path. When I woke up from surgery, all my preexisting pain was gone. I only had pain from the incision. Now you see how spine surgeons miss this. They were afraid to touch me; afraid of a poor result from their surgery that could lower their personal statistics of success because they could not link my symptoms to the imaging. My walking also returned to normal and I regained strength in my legs. Like you, I did also have pain in both feet and when driving and having to push the pedals, it would get worse.

Here is the medical literature that changed the course of my journey to spine surgery.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3111492/