I am not sure what you mean by extra piece of bone. In my personal situation it was not referred to as an extra bone. It was palpable mass. It would "disappear" or "hide" depending on the positioning of my spine. This is why the flexion/extension MRI was required. These are much different than your typical MRI. I had to go to a stand alone MRI place (thankfully insurance still covered) my local hospitals do not have the machine and from what they stated most do not. That would be my first bit of advise., Get your doctor to order the flexion/extension MRI. The findings should show "thickening of the nuchal ligament" that is the diagnosis of nuchal fibrocartilaginous pseudotumor, however a doctor must understand what that means, SEVERAL I went to had zero knowledge of this condition. A neurosurgeon is the one who diagnosed from that MRI. Unfortunately in my case, I was not diagnosed from that MRI until a couple years later. Problem being the pseudotumor continued growing for those two years and was much, much larger at the time of surgery. Definitely make sure it is a recent MRI (within 3months) that they operate off of. During surgery it was noticed that not only was pseudotumor in my nuchal ligament it also began encompassing my trap muscle, which in turn caused the surgeon to completely severe my trap. The doctors will go over benefits and disadvantages of the surgery, they have too. I cannot state your doctor is incorrect as I have now been diagnosed with cervical dystonia, which I imagine in lamens terms I would assume would be weakening of that tendon, but I don't know for sure. With all that we are experiencing it is hard to say if one pain would be worse than another. After the surgery you are supposed to attend physical therapy to strengthen your tendons and muscles again. Unfortunately for me. COVID caused physical therapy to be cancelled after only 1 visit and wasn't reinstated ever for me. I asked and was told it would no longer have beneficial results. I do not believe I am your typical case. I think i might be more so the warning of what could happen. I was told there could be complications and that there was a chance it was cancer but that the benefits outweighed any possible side effects. I was experiencing some interesting symptoms prior to surgery... including but not limited to (ass y'all know, there are so many we are feeling because this) white outs...I would get extremely dizzy and would the have same symptoms of a panic attack but in addition my vision would completely white out for minutes at a time. I wouldn't lose consciousous (that I am aware of, but I was mostly alone or with my very young children). My pupils were dilating to different sizes, that one was extremely scary. I couldn't hold food down. Then the trouble swallowing began. I'm sorry if this is confusing but I am bawling my eyes out as I write this. Because as I stated above I am at the beginning of this battle again and NO ONE is fucking listening. I am scared and in so much pain it's hard to breathe.