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Hello everyone, I'm from Rome and I am a semi-professional boxer (not the kicking-arse-and-taking-names type, just a good competitive athlete).

I discovered an herniated cervical disc (c5-c6) on September 2011. Syptoms were the usual, neck/right shoulder/r.arm pain and numbness with progressive strenght loss and the freaking "click&freeze" thing on the nerve that made me eat 4 or 5 big punches every time it occurred when I was fighting.

I tried to carry on doing the impossible for almost ten months when i decided to take the step, but i went to the "wrong guy". We agreed on the ADR with the M6-C thing. I underwent the surgery on July 2012, and the day after I found out that he simply forgot to mention that he was going to use a cervical peek cage in conjunction with carbon fiber reinforcement (a good fusion surgery from what I've heard, still a freaking fusion though!).

After the initial understandable freak out, i tried to live with it but now I don't want to anymore. Even though the surgery went apparently well and the numbness is gone, I have difficulty in rotating my head on the right, I still have to live with pain on the right side of my upper body, my profession is enough painful already and my carreer is at risk;
I know the pain may go away as the nerve will recover, and anyway I know that in every surgery lies the risk of consequent pain, but I would accept it better if it came from the surgery I wanted in the first place.
For sure I am struggling to continue my carreer, when I see a lot of fighters carry on with no problem at all after ADR .

I know also that in the long run, with my lifestyle as a boxer, this surgery will accelerate tremendously the wear and tear thing of the adjacent discs and in X years I will probably have to go through this nightmare again.

So my choices are to quit or to "risk" my carreer this way, and that is ABSOLUTELY out of the question. After a lifetime when all that sweat, blood and sacrifice are about to pay nobody can ask me that. Period.

I would like to know if it's still possible to change this peek cage and undergo ADR surgery.
If It is, i would like to know where to go to get this job done properly. I am reading a lot of ECS and Dr. Bertagnoli in Germany. It could be a good choice for me since I live in Rome. Any advice?

thanks for reading, hugs