Pain in spinal degeneration comes from impingement on nerve roots. Spinal cord compression, whole more serious, is painless, although it can produce a range of funny sensations as well as weakness.
I am riding a 5” drop to the top of the bars the below, but as you can see, I have prosthetic discs above and below a fusion to fix 3-level disease, which is not common in the US at this point. Nevertheless, I would recommend anyone headed for ACDF to ask their surgeon about prostheses.
