@blueveinedthrobber,
Is your doctor a spine specialist? Your spine description is the same as my diagnosis. I didn't need surgery. I'm posting this a second time because it's worth a try before you have surgery. ---BBB
Bear, I want to suggest a possible improvement in your pain that won't cost you an arm and a leg.
I had the same sort of severe pain for almost a year last year. My orthopedic doctor, on the staff of the best hospital in Albuquerque, decided after his treatments didn't work that I should be seen by an orthopedic doctor who specializes in spines. He referred me that that busy doctor. and it took about a month to get an appointment. The doctor took x-rays, not take an expensive MRI, and discovered the damage to my spine's discs in my lower back. He suggested that, instead of surgery, he start with inject a medication that he had good results with into the lower three disks in my spine. I agreed to the treatment.
Took another month to get on his schedule. I was in a wheel chair when I went to his surgery room in the hospital's surgery floor. He had large equipment that showed my entire spine on a screen next to my bed and where the injection needles should go. He used the equipment to know where to inject six places on the three discs while his assistant made sure I was comfortable. No pain resulted during the process. I was wheeled out of the room and Butrflynet drove me home. Within four hours, I began to feel pain relief. The next morning, I was pain free, I could stand up straight for the first time in months, and I could walk without pain. The doctor checked with me two days later and told me some of his patients have pain relief even faster than I experienced.
I had suffered for nearly a year and no doctor's treatments helped me. Then the spine doctor treated me and his exams and treatments finally worked.
You may want your doctor to refer you to a spine specialist orthopedic surgeon. It's worth a try.
