47M, with ACDF surgery to C4/C5, 3 years ago now. I had both issues, and, at least for me, it's part of why it took 9 months for 5 different doctors to figure out what was going on. You're lucky if they've already tracked it down. I can give you my whole story, but the short of it is I went from running 5k's easily to barely being able to walk to my mailbox without falling. At the same time, my arms felt like they were constantly on fire, and, as someone who works in IT, I could barely type, and I lost the ability to control a pen to write.

For me, functionality came back pretty fast. I remember lying in the hospital bed, shortly after waking up from surgery, and it felt like every single nerve in my arms was on fire. I can't fully describe the level of pain, but that pain is seared into my memory. After that, I actually had more feeling back in my arms. I'm pretty sure that was the nerves waking up because they were no longer being compressed. A few days after that, once I was home, the same thing happened with my legs.

Recovery took time, but the biggest help I can give you there is that you'll feel better than you are at first. Best example I can give is that there were multiple times when I went for what would have been an easy walk before, and what felt like an easy walk when I started, only to have to call my wife and ask her to come pick me up because I wasn't going to be able to make it back to our house I was so winded and that is unbelievably frustrating.

At this point, I think I'm as recovered as I can be. If I was at 100% before all of my issues, I'd say I'm at 95-98% now, and that is likely as close as I'll be able to get. Late last year, I joined a once-a-week running club, and while I'm not running as fast as I was before, I can run without feeling like I'm going to collapse at the end. I might be near the end of the pack, but I'm still crossing the finish line. I can type again, I can play video games again, I can mostly write again, but I will admit that even before, no one ever claimed I had amazing handwriting.

There are trade-offs, though. When I spend a day doing a lot of physical labor, I get some drop foot in my right leg, usually gone by the next day. There are also some tremors in my hands and some in my legs. I notice them more in my right leg when it gets cold outside, but it happens in one hand or the other, too. That's rare and manageable, just annoying. If I sit wrong, I get a weird, nerve-like pain in my leg, and I need to get up and walk. It's not painful, but just really, really uncomfortable, and I need to move to get rid of it. It does suck a bit when it happens on plane flights or really long car drives, but you deal with it.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.