Go to amazon.com and search for the paperback " Oh, My Aching Back" by Leon Root and I think two others.

Sounds to me though that the problems some of you guys might have are much less routine than the typical person I have met with a " bad baqck" .

In my case I fell about 8 feet flat on my back. I had pains shooting down both of my legs at the time and unbearable pain. Ambulance took me to hospital, where an idiot intern had me standing up in no time. Walked out of there, met my friends in a bar and was very macho about it. Gradually the pain went away. About two weeks later I played a game of squash and back came the pains, exactly the same as the first time. Spent 10 days in the hospital flat on my back, and had two doctors (a neurologist and an orthopedic guy) arguing over whether to operate or not. I remember the orthopedic doctor terrifying me: " you have pain running down both legs. That means the disk is pressing on the center. That means you are in danger of losing control of all functions below the waist. Our window of opportunity for surgery would be very small if that happened. Do you know what that means?" I was young then, and said that I didn' t realize that I had much control of things below my waist anyway. All I remembered was that however bad the pain was it had disappeared once and I expected it would disappear again. He sent me a new intern to " discuss my operation" . I was really rude to her, said I wasn' t going to have an operation - she got all red in the face and flustered, tried to explain the benefits of fusing. I was very suspicious.
(This was in Canada so the cost of the care wasn' t an issue.)

So for past 25 years I have had maybe two or three more 10 day sessions in bed recovery, but otherwise it is controllable. I still ski, but very gently (I don' t think I have had one fall while skiing in those 25 years). When I am driving I never do a " shoulder check" to see if a car is coming (did that once and got locked into a position it took me days to get out of).

Obviously my problem was not as serious as those described elsewhere.