Brief Answer:
many options.

Detailed Answer:
First, there is the diagnostics, which are the most important thing:
1) MRI to look at where and why the nerve is pinched.
2) nerve conductions to see how badly the nerve(s) are hurt.

here's why you want that:
there are various reasons it can get pinched and they all have very different treatments. There could be JUST a bit of wear/tear/arthritis in the surrounding bones. Surgery might help. the consequences of it are zero except for what you are having. This is among the most likely possibilities. Diabetes makes bone grow. It is very common for diabetics to have a bit too much bone here and a nerve pinch. If surgery is done, the bone is coming right back again. So, mostly, this is a mild disease of no catastrophe that nothing can be done for anyway.
OR...
slipped disk which can hit the spine and.....
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=101123 which can cause catastrophic paralysis.
or the bones can be very thin (at age 71) and also cause catastrophic paralysis.
These are surgically fixable. It is hard to say which are easier to fix but I've had several patients with very good results in each category who were having loss of strength in the upper limbs that totally got better in weeks to months.

Then there is treatment. If it isn't a catastrophe I am not sure how beneficial surgery is. Nobody I've ever seen have surgery lowered their narcotic use even a little. Everybody had their nerve damage get better.

There are injections for pain. Never seen much benefit from it. It is profitable more than it is beneficial.

There are medications for pain. They help. People like them. THe best if it works are nerve dampers like amitryptiline. they are fairly safe, they give 24 hrs. the body has zero addiction/withdrawal risk from these drugs and most are very cheap. Some are mildly expensive and are not the best ones (lyrica).

There is aspirin like drugs they are a bit risky and a bit weak.

There are narcotics. They have obvious problems. They are effective, have a wide safety margin, they do not have the organ damage risks of the aspirin like drugs and nobody likes them among doctors right now.

And then there is physical therapy which has the most effectiveness on living better BUT
it can be potentially dangerous if the neck has an unstable structure that could give paralysis, so, we are back at the beginning.

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