I didn't have back surgery, but my brother did when he was 23 and they refused two vertebrae together and one thing that really helped with pain is of course keeping moving and keeping it the muscles around it built up keeping everything is in best shape you can if you're hurting a ton go to the doctor and see about going to physical therapy and there might be a way to tape your neck that keeps it from hurting at all. I know this is about backs and necks and things but they use the kinesthetic tape on my knees and I've had eight knee surgeries and they were able to take down all the swelling with just taping it and stop all the grinding in my knees would just taping it and made my knees heal so much faster so maybe there's a possibility that something that can help you

Something that has helped me with a lot of my pain and a lot of people I know with their pain is medical cannabis. I don't know if you're in a place where medical cannabis is legal or not but it has really helped in a lot of ways especially RSO or it's full name is Rick Simmons oil. you can look that one up and it'll give you all the information on that. I actually don't take any pain medication anymore at all because I can use my medical cannabis and it works better plus there's no possible ways for it to interact with my other medications and I'm on quite a lot of medications, plus I don't want to be on opiates or anything like that.