nursing after neck fusion surgery?

[chiariwarrior]

I graduated nursing school as an rn in may 2011. I worked for 4 month in a local hospital in icy. I began having g horrible neck pain to the point I had to quit Bc no doc could tell me what was wrong and the pain was unbearable. I had had brain surgery in 2006 for my chiari malformation. Since then I have had headaches but this neck pain was new.

So I started working at a dialysis clinic thinking maybe a regular day shift would be alittle better. Boy was I wrong. The stress and all the leaning over at that clinic made it worse. I was forced to quit after about 5 months. After this I forced myself to search and find someone to help me. I went to see Dr Henderson who is the best chiari Dr in the country in my opinion even though he was 16 hrs away. He did a lot of testing and found out I had an unstable neck and the angle of my neck to skull was way off. With these findings he has decided to do a skull to c2 fusion with a rib graft. This is going to be done next week. The bad part is the recovery is long. He said at least 6 months before going back to any type of work.

My question is does anyone know how hard it will be to work as a nurse with a neck fused? I am scared I am not gonna be able to find a job Bc of how long I will have been off and being so new also. And I will have a physical handicap as well. I'm just afaid. I don't know if I will be able to work a 12 hour shift at a hospital on the floor. Any thoughts or experience with this???? Thanks for reading.