Anterior Cervical Spine w/ Fusion c6/7

I had anterior cervical spine w/ fusion on Sept. 4, 2009. My recovery has been pretty good. The pain had for the most part gone away in my neck and was mostly left with pain in shoulder blades. I rarely take any pain meds; had to quit the Hydrocodone because it was hurting my stomach, so now the occasional Tramadol.  At my 3 week followup the doctor said everything looked like it was healing as it should.  Recently, I began experiencing pain into my left arm again. I went back to work at 5 weeks after the surgery and have been wearing a hard collar all the time(although stopped sleeping in it at 4 weeks). I have several handwritten forms that I have to fill out for my job. It was difficult to fill out the forms at first. I called my doctors office and they said that it was likely just related to swelling of the nerves and to give it a few weeks. Its now been almost 8 weeks and the pain is increasing. I called my doctor's office and they said this could be a sign that things aren't fusing properly and scheduled me to come in 3 days from now.

I have been reading all the blogs and seen several comments about people having pain return. Has anybody had the pain return and then go away without surgical intervention? Could this just be part of the healing proces? I'm scared because I'm not seeing many comments out there about permanent postive results from this surgery.

[kay290]

Complete fusion is supposed to take place in 6 weeks, which means no lifting anything over 10-15 pounds until you know by xray that fusion has been successful. Have you over done things with lifting? One disc fusion is close to 100% effective according to my surgeron.