Advice/experience, please! C5 spinal operation

[Purplepeoniesdroppingpetals]

Hi anyone had any experience of having a herniated disc in the neck operated on? My 78 yr old parent has just had theirs done (was planned twice and cancelled twice) after a fall last week, which caused more bruising. They’ve had physio and speech therapy all week but are still largely bed bound and the dr reckoned they would be home after 3 days, which I did think was wildly optimistic... any advice/experience/cautionary tales welcomed. Cheers

Dunno about that, but my 78 yo dad just had surgery on C3 & C4, 8 days ago. He's all pinned together again (he says). He was still in a lot of pain when we spoke 3 days ago. Me & step-mum are nagging to try to get him out of bed as much as possible, even if just for 2 minutes at a time. I will find out tomorrow if he's out of hospital & when that was.

I came on to ask this exact question. I had disc replaced 2 weeks ago between c5 /c6.

I was out of hospital the next day

I have been given no guidance though so on unclear of recovery time, when I can vac, etc.

Also I have really bad tingling which has not lessened with the surgery so I'm unclear if this is it now or if there is a chance it will go away.

I was out of bed same day but not sure if this makes a difference I am in my fifties

Oh lord, lijkk, two of the discs sounds worse! Hope that he is feeling better and you have good news. Re my parent Apparently they’ve got more control over their hands now which is a relief as they couldn’t feed themselves. I don’t want to get my hopes up too much.

Newidentity glad you could get up. They’ve sat in a chair once but got super tired. Speech is improving a bit. This has been misdiagnosed for about three years as general deterioration or a brain tumour variously - it took two major falls to get the op. I have a feeling that an awful lot of irreversible damage has been done and my parent is finally seeing that 😞

Dad had something else, stenosis. His procedure was "posterior laminectomy with possible fusion", and involved breaking bits & putting back together. I think might be worse than disc surgery(?)

it was also done pro-actively, his only symptom was stiff neck if he tried to look up. They scared him saying he had high risk of paralysis if not done. Maybe wanted to do it now before he was older and too frail to withstand surgery.

Now he's in a lot of pain & having to be coaxed to move at all. I hope it's just temporary recovery phase.

My only symptom was the tingling but I was also told I needed the surgery to avoid paralysis

Parent was told they had a risk of heart attack because of damage to the vagal nerve, quadriplegia, and/or double incontinence so was desperate for the op. Has got better control of fingers today and fed themselves and brushed teeth. Managed to sit on a bed without falling over but no standing yet.

On the upside, only needing paracetamol and not all of the time. Silver linings.