In the setting of prior cervical spine surgery, with new or increasing nontraumatic cervical or neck pain or radiculopathy, initial imaging with radiographs and/or CT cervical spine without contrast is usually appropriate.
Source: https://acsearch.acr.org/docs/69426/Narrative/
Sorry to hear about this. I think increasing pain like this requires follow up and if your doc retired, yes, you have to find a new orthopedist. That's always daunting because you feel like they want to start over but hopefully that isn't the case for you and you can get some continuity in your care. Sounds like Chin is recommending imaging which sounds right to me. You feel pain, you need to see what is going on in there. is the Gaba not working? And you don't want to try Lyrica or is there a reason for that question?