Two years after my neck fusion, I still wake up at 3 a.m. with my neck aching and my hand going numb.

I had my neck fused two years ago. C5 to C7. Plates and screws.

The surgery took the pain out of my arm, and everyone told me how great I looked.

I'm 58. I've been a dental hygienist for thirty years.

I went into that surgery thinking it would be the end of it. That was the whole point. You get through it, you heal, and you get your life back.

That's not what happened.

What happened is I got used to it.

When people ask, I say I'm fine. I say I've learned to deal with it. I've said it so many times I started to believe it.

Here's what dealing with it looks like.

It's 7 o'clock. Dinner's done. I'm walking around the kitchen with a heating pad on the back of my neck, and the cord drags behind me.

I take a Tylenol. I took one yesterday too. I'll probably take one tomorrow.

If I do too much around the house, I have to go lie down. Washing my hair wears me out so much I could take another shower after.

At a stop sign, I don't turn my head. I turn my whole body.

•••

And every night it's the same.

I get into bed and try to find a way to lie that doesn't hurt. I stack two pillows. I tuck a rolled towel into the pillowcase, the way my PT showed me.

It's fine for about an hour.

Then around 3 a.m., I wake up. There's a deep ache in the back left of my neck, and it won't let go.

By morning my left hand is numb. I sit on the edge of the bed shaking it out before I can even get up.

And I did everything I was supposed to.

• Two more rounds of PT. It helped while I was going. Then it came back.
• Gabapentin and muscle relaxers. They took the edge off and left me foggy.
• An injection at the level above my fusion. A few good weeks, then nothing.
• The heating pad. Gone by morning.
• Every pillow in the house.

•••

So I went back to my surgeon.

He pulled my CT up on the screen and pointed. "See this? That's solid. You're fusing really well. Honestly, this looks great."

"Then why does it still hurt every day?"

"Everybody heals differently. Give it time."

"It's been two years."

He smiled like he was being kind. "Some people just have more stiffness after this surgery. Keep up with your PT."

I drove home and sat in the driveway for a long time.

Because if my scan looked great, then nothing was wrong. And if nothing was wrong, there was nothing left to fix.

That night the ache woke me up at 3 again.

I didn't want to wake Rick, so I lay there in the dark with my phone. I opened my fusion group and started scrolling. I was looking for one person who'd gotten better.

I found a woman who'd had her fusion 13 years ago. She'd posted a picture of her scar for the anniversary.

Under it she wrote, "It still hurts every day but I've learned to deal with it."

Right below that, someone else wrote, "Does anyone have anything positive to say about this surgery? You all are not giving me much hope."

I put my phone face down on the blanket. My hand was already going numb.

That was my next 13 years. The heating pad, the Tylenol, and learning to deal with it.

•••

Two days later I was back on the table at PT. Mike had his thumbs in my shoulders again.

He was quiet for a while. Then he said, "Can I ask you something weird?"

"Sure."

"What are you sleeping on?"

I almost laughed. "Mike. I have plates and screws in my neck. I don't think my pillow's the problem."

"Humor me. How do you wake up?"

"Worse than when I went to bed."

He stopped pressing. "Every morning?"

"Every morning."

He sat down on his stool. "Okay. Let me show you something."

He grabbed the plastic spine off the counter and pointed at the neck.

"Your surgery made these three bones one solid piece. Right?"

"Right."

"So they don't bend anymore. But you still turn your head. You still look down. So who's doing the bending?"

I looked at it. "The ones next to it?"

"The one above and the one below. They're doing their own job, plus the job of the ones we fused. Your surgeon told you that before surgery, right?"

He had. I'd kind of pushed it out of my head.

"So those discs are working harder than normal, all day. And the muscles around them are working harder too." He tapped my shoulder. "That's the granite."

I nodded.

"Now. During the day, what do you do for it?"

"PT. Heat. Tylenol."

"And it helps?"

"For a while."

"Right. Here's the part nobody looks at." He held up the spine. "You sleep eight hours a night. Your head's on a pillow that whole time."

"When you stack two pillows, your chin gets pushed toward your chest." He tipped the head forward.

"When you roll on your side, your head drops toward the mattress, or your shoulder pushes it up." He tipped it one way, then the other.

I just stared at it.

"There's a study out of Hong Kong. They raised the pillow a couple of inches, and that alone changed the angle of the neck by 66 percent."

"So I come in here," I said slowly, "and you loosen it up."

"And you go home and use the heat, and it calms down. Then you go to bed, and all night it gets bent and pulled again. By morning, it's right back where we started."

"That's why it never lasts."

"That's why it never lasts. And that's why your scan looks great. The surgery did what it was supposed to do. A CT can't show what your neck goes through at 3 in the morning."

I didn't say anything for a minute. I was thinking about the towel. Two years of that towel.

"The towel's supposed to fix that, isn't it?"

"It's supposed to. It holds your neck in the right spot when you're on your back." He shook his head. "But nobody sleeps on their back all night. The second you roll over, the towel's under your shoulder."

It always was.

•••

That night I ordered one of those tall, curvy memory foam neck pillows off Amazon.

It was awful. It was so tall it pushed my chin forward. On my back it was okay. But the second I rolled onto my side, my head was jammed up at an angle.

I was awake at 1 a.m. instead of 3.

I brought it in to show Mike.

He laughed a little. "Yeah. Most of those are made for back sleepers. You need something lower in the middle and higher on the sides. And a place for your shoulder to go when you roll over."

"Does that even exist?"

"A few of my fusion patients use one." He wrote the name on the back of my appointment card. "Check with your surgeon first. But I think it's worth a try."

It came a few days later. When I pulled it out of the plastic, the tag said Lanarie Nest OrthoPillow.

It didn't look like any pillow I'd ever owned. It's about two feet wide. White on top, with little quilted diamonds, and black mesh on the sides.

There's a low dip in the middle for your head when you're on your back. The two sides are raised up for when you're on your side. And there are two scooped-out spots at the bottom corners.

I pressed my hand into it. It gave a little, then held its shape.

•••

That night I didn't stack anything. No towel. Just the Nest.

I lay on my back first. My head sank into the dip, and I could feel the edge come up under my neck. It wasn't pushing. It was just there.

Then I rolled onto my left side. That's my bad side, the one that wakes me up.

My shoulder slid down into the cutout. My head stayed level.

I lay there and waited for the pull at the back of my neck, the one I always get when I roll over.

It was still sore. But it didn't pull.

I told myself it was just the first night. Anything feels different the first night.

I fell asleep waiting for 3 a.m.

When I opened my eyes, it was light out.

By the end of the first week, the 3 a.m. ache had woken me up just once, instead of every night.

Week three is when I really started watching. Because week three is when everything else had quit on me. The PT, the injection, all of it. Good for a few weeks, then gone.

•••

Then I went to my sister's for a long weekend. I didn't bother packing the Nest. I figured a couple of nights wouldn't matter.

I slept in her guest room on two regular pillows.

By Sunday morning I was sitting on the edge of her bed rubbing my neck and shaking out my hand. By lunch, my shoulders were tight as ever.

I got home Sunday night and went straight to bed on the Nest.

By Tuesday morning, it was gone again.

Somewhere around week five, I opened the kitchen drawer and saw the heating pad. The cord was still wrapped around it. I couldn't remember the last time I'd taken it out.

The Tylenol bottle was lasting a lot longer too.

And at PT, Mike put his thumbs in my shoulders and stopped.

"Huh," he said.

"What?"

A couple of weeks after that, Rick and I were on the couch after dinner. It was the same spot where I used to sit with the heating pad on my neck. He had one of his cop shows on.

Halfway through, I realized something.

Not while I cleaned the kitchen. Not even when I backed out of the driveway.

I just sat there with my feet up next to Rick. I didn't say a word. I didn't want to jinx it.

•••

Here's what I think about now.

My surgery fixed the part of my neck that was broken. It did its job.

But nobody ever looked at what happened to the rest of my neck every night. Eight hours a night, for two years, it was bending and pulling on the exact spots that were already working the hardest.

I didn't need to learn to deal with it. I needed something that worked while I was asleep.

So if you're reading this at 3 a.m. with your hand going numb, this is for you.

• If your neck still hurts every single day, years after your fusion.
• If your PT says it's like working on granite.
• If your scans look great and you still hurt, and you've started to wonder if it's you.
• If you've scrolled the fusion groups at night looking for one person who got better.
• If the heating pad and the Tylenol are how you get through every evening.
• If you've told yourself you just have to learn to deal with it.
• And if all you really want is one day where you don't think about your neck.

The pillow I use is the Lanarie Nest OrthoPillow. Mike still recommends it to his fusion patients. Check with your surgeon or PT first, the way he told me to.

I know you've been let down before. I went into surgery thinking the pain would be gone, and it wasn't.

So here's what made it easy for me to try. You get 90 nights with it. Not a week, the whole 90. If your nights and mornings don't feel different, you send it back and get every dollar back.

Keep doing your PT and your exercises. Just give your neck something that works at night too.

I almost settled for another 13 years of learning to deal with it. I'm really glad I didn't.

Here's where to find it. Go take a look and see if it's right for you.