[Don Plumley]

My wife (she was in her mid-30's) had nagging back pain since childbirth. One night after a bad coughing fit, she extruded a disk into her L1-L2 spinal column. By the end of the week we saw some foot dragging (toe) which means as Lyle pointed out, there was danger of spinal cord damage.

Found the best back cracker at UCLA, he did a simple microdiskectomy and 20 years later she is pretty much 100%. Scary few days for sure, but she is a success story when it comes to spinal surgery. Minimally invasive, minimal recovery. Any orthopod will be happy to do back surgery. Find someone that this procedure is almost exclusively what they do. Otherwise, it's like going to a VW shop with your 911RS and wonder why they can't make the MFI sing.

One of the things we did for a second opinion was visit another specialist surgeon and explain, "You don't get to be the surgeon. Look at the MRI and let us know if this was your wife/daughter, what would you do?" His answer was, "I'd have her in surgery in the next 30 minutes."