@ktgirl The spine injection was done as a diagnostic test by a local surgeon who later decided not to offer me surgery. Sometimes they do that to avoid surgery. I did not have any more, and no one at Mayo suggested an injection. My surgeon offered to fix the problem. For me it was a 5 hour drive to go to Mayo, and worth every mile. If you have spine surgery, the recovery is long. The first 6 weeks are the worst, but not that bad really. When I woke up from surgery, all my pain was gone, except for the incision and throat pain from the surgery itself, but all the pain from the spine problem was gone. I was nauseated from the drugs, and tried doing without the pain medicines and I did fine. The pain was tolerable, so I didn't take any after I left the hospital during my entire recovery. After 3 months, I felt good, but a bit weaker, and after 3 months in a neck brace I needed rehab, but doing that let me avoid having hardware on my spine. I slept a lot during my recovery.

I'm glad you enjoyed my story. I am still amazed by the whole experience and what the success of it meant to me. After you have your evaluation, I hope you'll share your experience. I guess you know how good it is since you have already been a patient there. I wish I had come to Mayo first, but I tried to get help for 2 years locally. I'm not planning on more spine issues, but Mayo is the only place I will go for that. If you have fusion surgery for C6 C7, it likely shouldn't affect your range of motion for turning your head, etc. Most of that is done by C1 & C2, and C3 & C4 also help. My range of motion is the same as before with a fused C5 C6 except that I can't tuck my chin to my chest all the way.. .it's close, but doesn't touch like before. We have an art for healing discussion here, and some people do quilting or crafts. You can post your quilts there and join the discussion. Here is the link. There are some more photos of me with my surgeon and the painting in my post on the first page in that discussion. https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/art-for-healing/

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