@amykins789 I wanted to welcome you to Connect. This is something we all wonder about if pain means that things are getting worse. Perhaps you may want to diagram your pain on a body drawing periodically and date it, so you will know if symptoms are progressing. I did that myself and documented so many weird pain symptoms that I scared several surgeons out of helping me because they couldn't understand how the pain related to the imaging of my spine. I had spinal cord compression from a collapsed C5/C6 disc with bone spurs so it was pot luck what part of the cord was getting touched or pressed as it moved within the spinal canal with neck movement. Doing my diagrams also helped me find literature of surgical cases like mine that was considered a rare presentation of cord compression called funicular pain. I did bring this information to a surgeon at Mayo who understood this and did a cervical fusion.

Generally speaking, I think there is a window of time before a condition progresses to impinging and damaging nerves where surgery is most beneficial. Surgery can also stop further progression of a problem, but may not be able to fix any permanent damage that had already occurred, and of course, you need to find the right surgeon for the job and understand the risk to benefit relationship.