trust me, I am neither. And I'm also not "angry" at you, and your "poor reporting job" isn't important. Its the "take home points"...the impression with which these people left you. "bulging disks are bogus". I'm sure he didn't use those exact words, but that was the message. "can't see any difference with imaging". just plain wrong. I've seen it. doc showed me "..this is a normal spine...this is yours". didn't even have to point to the problem; it was obvious to the most casual observer. and now, the wrong messages get re-broadcast, and thats all I'm trying to counter. Then along with this message is the underlying "its all in your head"..."not/less than legtimate"..."just get over it and it'll go away". that's what makes people who've experienced it so angry. These people who imparted this message to you are guilty of something. they either did an extremely poor job of communicating, or they're completely full of crap, or both.
As far as "the surgery" goes...well, thats another bad message. I don't believe there is a "the surgery". each case is unique. I'm not an expert on it, but I imagine that the big obstacles are the fact that its hard to get at these parts, without damaging other parts, and these parts never get a break from doing their job, because of gravity, so they don't heal well, and now you've got inflamation/irritation/spasm/repeat on another part instead of the original part, with the same result. maybe one day they'll be able to shoot us up to the space station for a couple of weeks...have the surgery up there, heal, then come back.
but anyway, surgery isn't always the right option. In my dad's case, it kind of fixed itself. he's got the same problem, but he's 30 years ahead of me in the process. The disc basically disolved by itself, and calcification fused the vertebrae. The docs predicted this. those were his options a few years ago from the docs: surger to "try" to fix...no guarantees...or "wait".
