40 Year old L5-S1 Problems..

[mmglobal]

Marty, sorry that you need to be her, but glad you found us. Do the MRI's show the nerve compression that is consistent with the nerve symptoms you are having. Is the disc moderately or severely collapsed? (When you describe mild ddd, I presume that it's not. rereading, I see mild loss of signal.. minor narrowing.) There are many treatment options available and I recommend that you learn about them all. Some of the new technologies sound exciting, but are not ready for prime time. Nucleus repairs seem to require an annulus repair for them to be viable. There are a couple of annulus repairs out there that don't seem to get too much attention. Since you are talking about bulges and not tears and protrusions, these may not apply to you.

If you've got good disc height, and are mostly radicular pain... not low back pain, it's hard to imagine that ADR is what you need... Do the axial views on your MRI (horizontal slices) show the compression? If not, chemical irritation of the nerve root may be in play... often with very benign looking MRI's and very poorly understood by many practitioners.

You should be able to come back... but make no mistake that the first cut of the knife is the most important. Do your homework, make informed decisions!

Mark