Hi y'all, before I comment I want to make sure you understand that I'm not a surgeon but I'm a retired board certified surgical first assistant 30 years of experience and neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery. During my career I participated in only three of these types of decompressive and stabilization surgeries as they are or at least were when I was in practice fairly rare. I was diagnosed about 3 yrs ago with cervical stenosis at C2-C3. At this time my stenosis classification is between grade two and grade 3 grade two meaning that spinal cord compression is apparent on CT scan. Grade 3 is the same except grade 3 means that there is signal change coming from that level of the cord. On my scan my spinal cord is now pinned against the anterior or front wall of the spinal canal. This causes several problems. Firstly the signal change of course and additionally can place traction on the vagus nerves both left and right which interupts their communication with the systems that they govern. The left vagus controls heart rate, rhythm, circulatory tone (i.e. how relaxed both the veins and arteries are) blood pressure and breathing. The right vagus controls all organ systems below the diaphragm (i.e. all of the digestive organs including metabolic function, reproductive system etc) for instance when I change position say I lay down and I put some traction on the right vagus my heart rate increases immediately and eventually the slows down to a normal rate but it takes time for the vagus to re-establish proper communication with what it's supposed to be controlling. Disturbances in the right Vegas system will cause things like diarrhea, diabetes type II, slowed digestion, incontinence of both kinds(!!), disturbances in liver function among others. As far as when one should seriously consider having surgery to stabilize your neck the Hallmark for surgery is when muscle wasting begins. That is you begin to lose muscle mass. As I recall once that happens that's not going to come back. If you have grade two cervical stenosis you need to see a neurosurgeon to evaluate it and you need to see one who does many of these or has a lot of experience doing it. A lot. I want to emphasize that it is very very critical that you find one with a great deal of these cases under their belt. You've heard the saying if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail and if you're a surgeon sometimes everyone looks like a surgical procedure. But there are very specific criteria that have been established in the last 20 years or so to give you a solid point in time where you should think about it. I've waited as long as I have because putting rods in your neck limits or completely eliminate motion in your neck (plus the fact that I'm an old man now) which fixes the problem of course but you can't move your neck anymore I didn't like that idea but I'm getting to the point where I think I'm probably going to have to do it. There are surgeries that will decompress your spinal cord without using rods that limit motion but very few surgeons have experience doing this but there are some. It's called cervical laminoplasty and involves hardware but does not interfere with motion and at the same time decompresses the cord. I would check out ( and this isn't a plug for him because I don't know him personally} Dr. Brian Su who is Co-Director of Spine Surgery at the Marin Heath Medical Center. I believe that's in the Los Angeles California area. He has an excellent YT channel that is excellent for both layperson's and providers. When you find his channel look at his vid titled 'Cervical Laminoplasty-Into the Operating Room" it gives a thorough explanation of the surgery complete with excellent graphical representations of it and descriptions as well as a colleague of his doing the actual surgery. Dr Su does these however not everyone with our problem is a candidate. He also offers video consultations. His contact info is in the video description. Just do a search for Brian Su M.D. on YT and you will learn all you need to know and more. I wish you all the best. Peace.