My ACDF Surgery Journey – Part 1
I was a carpet installer for 20 years, so I didn’t think much of the occasional pain in my right shoulder during certain lifts in the gym. I chalked it up to an old injury and adjusted my shoulder workouts accordingly.
When my lower back started giving me sciatic symptoms after increasing my weight during Romanian Deadlifts (RDLs), I assumed I’d just pushed too fast without perfect form. My RDL form was usually solid — I’d been doing them for years — but I was intent on gaining more strength and, like many of us, went a little overboard chasing new goals.
I backed down the weights and changed up my routine. After a few months, the sciatic symptoms eased up substantially. They never fully went away, though, so I decided heavy RDLs and deadlifts were off the table for a while. I replaced them with the hip thrust machine, weighted hyperextensions, heavy leg presses, and continued increasing weight for my upper‑body work, including overhead dumbbell presses and shoulder exercises.
A few months later, while we were selling our house and relocating to a new city, I woke up with a tight kink in my neck. It sat on the right side of my cervical spine and sent a nagging pain through me whenever I turned my head. I figured I’d slept on it wrong and pulled a muscle.
In retrospect, I should’ve connected it to the fact that I couldn’t sleep on my left side without my right shoulder and arm tingling and burning — not to mention the shoulder pain during certain lifts. But I assumed, once again, that it was just an old injury acting up.
Like a dumbass, I ignored the stubborn knot that refused to be stretched, massaged, or slept away. I ignored it even when the pain started radiating down my shoulder and arm. I fed it ibuprofen to shut it up and went on with my life.
“I can deal with this after we get moved,” I told myself.
We had so much going on — work, the gym, selling the house, relocating. Life. At the time, the pain felt like a small “to‑do” item on a very long list. It could wait. Or so I thought.
Lifting is important to both me and my husband, so once the house was sold and we relocated, the first things we focused on were furniture for the new place and more gym equipment for the garage. There was no break from lifting.
The kink in my neck didn’t feel as tight as before, but the ache radiating into my shoulder and arm was getting more frequent and more intense, especially after a good workout. I kept telling myself I needed to get set up with a new primary care physician and get it looked at. There was no excuse anymore — we were settled, we had excellent insurance, and my job is incredibly accommodating with PTO.
So what was the problem? I’m a stubborn hardhead sometimes. I wanted to believe I was indestructible and that seeing a doctor for something as lame as an “old injury” was a waste of time. We live outside the city limits, so it was easy to convince myself that interrupting my routine with a 45‑minute drive each way wasn’t necessary. I told myself I was just giving in to the aches and pains of life in the third chapter — and wasting PTO that could be used for vacation.
So again, I kept putting it off.
And then it happened. The brick wall fell on my head and gave me the sign I needed to finally get off my ass and find a primary care physician.
It was upper‑body day. After my short cardio warmup, I grabbed my 8‑lb dumbbells to do my first warm‑up set of incline bench concentration curls. I set the bench to a 45‑degree angle, extended my right arm onto the pad with a slight bend in the elbow, tucked my armpit to the edge, and started my first set of 20 to get the bicep warm.
I focused on mind‑muscle connection and slowly curled the dumbbell upward. I felt the muscle engage, watched the dumbbell rise about three inches off the pad… and then it just stopped. Mid‑lift. Frozen.
“What the hell,” I thought. “What’s happening.”
I tried again, forcing every bit of strength I had into the curl. Nothing. Not another fraction of an inch. I set my arm down, took a few breaths, and tried again. And again. Each attempt left me more confused than the last. My max free‑weight curl was typically 20 lbs — another red flag I didn’t recognize at the time.
In total shock, I put the 8‑lb weight down and picked up a 5‑lb dumbbell. I managed to curl it halfway before it, too, stopped dead. The only way to get it all the way up was to compensate with my body, which defeats the entire purpose of concentration curls.
I had a meltdown and called my husband, completely confused about where my strength had gone. He calmed me down and told me I was injured and needed to see a doctor.
The Scan That Changed Everything
Several internet searches, insurance lookups, and over 6 months later — yes, 6 months, thanks to being a new patient in an overbooked healthcare system — I finally sat in the exam room of one of the best neurosurgeons in Florida.
When Dr. SK pulled up my scan and then examined me, I learned that my cervical spine showed degenerative spondylosis, significant C4–C5 broad‑based degenerative disc disease, facet arthropathy, and moderate to severe foraminal stenosis — worse on the right side — with effacement of the right C5 nerve root.
Based on both the clinical exam and the MRI, I had clear signs of right C5 radiculopathy — motor and sensory deficits that matched the C4–C5 disc herniation and right‑sided foraminal stenosis compressing the C5 nerve root.
Dr. SK recommended C4-C5 anterior cervical diskectomy, instrumentation, and fusion (ACDF) surgery.
I’m not gonna lie, as he kept talking, all I really heard was:
“You’re broken and need surgery on your spine. Titanium plate and screws.”
I asked him about the percentage of risk, but what I really meant was: what are the chances this will fix me?
He explained that as with all surgical procedures there is risk involved. He explained that he will go in through a small incision in the front of my neck, move my trachea, esophagus, muscles, the carotid sheath and nerves but there is only a 5 percent chance of something going wrong.
He told me that ACDF is one of the most common and routinely performed spinal procedures each year in the United States and it has a very high success rate.
He said the one issue is that I will be in a neck brace for 3 months, but 3 months goes by fast. He said I wouldn’t be able to lift during that time either.
I looked at him through wild eyes as though he were speaking in a foreign language and said, “Three months? Will I at least be able to do my lower body workouts?”
He returned my look and said, “I mean maybe you can do some body weight squats while holding on to something. What if you fall?”
He said his goodbyes and proceeded to reach for the door, and my stare obviously expressed my immediate panic because the man stopped, leaned forward, looked me in my eyes, and asked me if I was okay. All I could do was nod my head yes.
He told me I didn’t have to decide right that moment. I could go home, discuss it with family and think about it but he was already scheduled out into January and he didn’t want me to be upset if I waited to make the decision and had to wait even longer for the surgery. This was November 6, 2025.
I called and spoke with my husband during the drive home and then called Dr. SK’s surgery coordinator once I arrived at the house and was scheduled for the surgery to be performed on February 4.
I had also told Dr. SK about the sciatic symptoms in my lower back and legs and he explained that those weren’t connected to my neck at all. Those were coming from an issue in my lumbar spine — something we haven’t even addressed yet.
Luckily, I had already modified my workouts to avoid any direct weight or pressure on my lumbar spine. I haven’t lost any lower body strength, and the symptoms are not constant so hopefully I changed things up before doing any real damage. We’ll find out once I get through the ACDF surgery and recovery.
One thing I want to talk about is pain tolerance. I’ve always had a high one — a lot of active people do — and not all critical issues announce themselves with agony. Mine didn’t. It wasn’t a sharp, unbearable pain that stopped me in my tracks. It was a nagging, annoying, uncomfortable ache that I kept brushing off as “just an old injury.” But the issue itself was severe. That mismatch between sensation and severity is part of what made this so easy to ignore for so long.
The Checklist for the Indestructible
If you have a high pain tolerance, your body whispers long before it screams. I didn’t realize it then, but my “whispers” were coming from two different floors of the same building. Use this list to check your own foundation:
The Cervical Whispers (The Neck & Arms)
The Ghost in the Bed: Tingling, burning, or a “heavy” sensation in your arm/shoulder that only flares up when you’re lying on the opposite side.
The Persistent “Kink”: A stiff neck you keep blaming on “sleeping wrong.” If a new pillow doesn’t fix it in three days, it isn’t the pillow.
The “Frozen” Muscle: Any moment where your strength simply vanishes mid-lift, even if there is no sharp pain associated with it.
The Lumbar Whispers (The Lower Back)
The “False” Form Issue: Sciatic symptoms or lower back pain during RDLs or Deadlifts. Don’t just assume your form is off; your spine might be shifting.
The Masking Effect: Symptoms that “ease up” when you modify your workout (like switching to hip thrusts) but never actually vanish.
The Reality Check: > By making small adjustments, I became an expert at masking and exacerbating. I was treating the “smoke” in my lumbar spine while a “fire” was already effacing the C5 nerve root in my neck. Just because you can work around the pain doesn’t mean the structural damage has stopped.