Cervical facet joint nerve RFA, now much head pain. Happened to you?

I had debilitating onset of pain in neck and across left shoulder in 2021 long long story short I had MRI which showed ALOT and it is scary for sure I lost all feeling in my left pinky all the way up to mid arm on very left side of the arm ( hope that makes sense ) We did injections 3 of them no change in fact worse on the last one we did PT which did nothing but put me in bed and off work with ice
I had a fusion in 2022 C 7 T 1 to where I was told this would put me down for 8 weeks I did the surgery and the nerve pain was gone however always have had the complete loss of feeling and was told " thats nerve damage " you may never get it back ok so then immediatly after this hip issues to where in 2024 had total hip as they said it was bone on bone i now one year late have been dealing w a signicant limp from leg lenght discrepancy which means my surgery leg is and has been verified 1/2 approx shorter which now i have the same neck and should and new loss of feeling in right hand index finger and top of hand in that area and i am being told not only does my limp have NOTHING to do with this new onset of spine ( cervical and lumbar issues ) but i have to have the same fusion done due to C8 nerve which is in fact right where the original C7 T1 fusion was done is still impinged so he wants to go in through the back and release C8 and I most likely will get my feeling back and another spine surgery I also just had an MRI of hip and have an overlying pocket of fluid " bear the trochanteric muslce and hamsrting tendinopathy and am scared worried and oh so confused what to do , do i address the hip that is causing the limp that has my gait off and then do the spine or find a miracle

i also want to add that I was told the " cup oeverhang " is 3-5 mm off in hip
and the surgeon who originally did my spine surgery stated in his first line of notes that he was operating on a 75 year old woman I was 53 at the time of that surgery I am scared !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ANY THOUGHTS IDEAS OR SURGEONS OUT THERE THAT CAN HEAR ME BECAUSE I CONTINUALLY GET TOLD TRY THIS , THIS IS NORMAL, NO THE LIMP AND LLD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR NOW SPINE PAIN OR LOWER BACK BACK
I am very educated and very in tune to what is going on with my body and none of this is ok

Sometimes with these spinal problems and joint problems you feel like a lamb going to the slaughter. These doctors who are supposed to know so much often make mistakes or they make the wrong decisions or make the wrong diagnosis and we are left to suffer with the results. You are lucky if you haven't been gaslighted or ghosted when you complained after surgery that you still had problems. I guess all we can do is keep working with our doctors and keep trying to help ourselves and get as much information as possible. My heart goes out to you.

Yes I had a similar experience with my ablation on cervical area, I just told my neurosurgeon about it two weeks ago. It was pretty painful for a couple weeks, burned up into the back of my head! I couldn’t touch that area. It was very numb the first couple days, then ouch!
It only helped the neck pain a little bit, so I will not get another one. But the pain did go away.

@toothlady79
I having the same problem

KEB

Years later I'm seeing this post because I'm going through the same thing. It's maddening, and quite separate pain from the procedure itself. With each RFA I was down 9 days in bed, like I had the flu with severe nausea. It took 4 weeks for the numbness of head and shoulders to go away on right side. Then approximately 10 days before the sunburn feeling to start. I'm now 11 days out from left side & same pattern. I sure hope there is relief soon...but I'll be hard pressed to ever do this again.

This happened to me 5 years ago. It took 6 weeks for my pain to settle down and it left me with a numb spot on the back of my neck on the left side. I have had 4 more RFAs since then but had no problems with the subsequent procedures. I have severe cervical spine problems and am now headed for surgery. I will be talking to my spine surgeon next month about what will be done and when. Getting old is hard.

Three years later, the back of my head is still partially numb and I still have a burning sensation in my upper right forehead by my hairline. Imagine constantly feeling like you are being burned by your curling iron and you can't get away from it all these years. At least I can brush my hair without cringing now, but I can still feel the weird sensation just not as horribly. I will never have another RFA. In the end when the pain doctor finally did what I asked him to all along and did injections just behind my earlobes where the ligaments attached and were sore, much of that stress pain in my neck was relieved. And I am assuming the rigidity in my neck from the spinal fusion and cage was probably putting too much stress on the ligaments. Anyway I haven't had to go back since we finally treated the area I asked him to instead of going through occipital injections, the RFA, etc. And shortly thereafter, I went to a neurologist and it turned out I had a cerebral spinal fluid leak probably from the surgery and had a blood patch done which fixed it and the base of skull agony went away. Too much of this is a guessing game when it comes to treatment.

@hetoneemom24 I am wondering what happened to you. I had hip replacement a few months after my 2021 neck fusion too. I can get around but it was no miracle surgery like they said it would be and I get so tired in a store or standing or walking for long. And when they did a special spinal myelogram in 2023 they found osteophytes (bone spurs) just below where I had my C5-6 fusion done which makes me wonder if they missed them or if they were new. I hope you have found a successful way to deal with this by now. It is sad how many people are suffering from things when they had so much hope that these procedures would help their situation.