I'm not sure at all if I ever sustained an injury to my back that could have caused all this, but sometime around 1991 I started having severe back pain, bad enough to miss work and seek a medical solution. I was a very active person up to that point - I played a lot of different sports at various levels of competition (mostly friendly!). Most were considered non-contact sports, namely Soccer, Volleyball, Frisbee football (a.k.a. Ultimate Frisbee), Tennis, and some work in the Gym. The closest thing to a real painful back injury I can recall is in the summer of 1991, playing in the Jersey Shore Beach Volleyball league at a semi-pro competition at Jenkinsons Beach. I was backpeddeling to catch up to a deep dink, and fell back hard landing on my tailbone. It hurt a little, knocked the wind out of me, and worst of all we lost the game. Soon afterwards, I started having back problems.

That autumn, after a couple of severe bouts of back and leg pain bad enough to keep me bedridden for 3-4 days at a time, I set out to discover what might be the cause of my pain. I visited my regular physician, who summized it was a colon problem. I visited a chiropractor, who summized it was an alignment problem. I FINALLY found an orthopedic sports medicine doctor, who sent me for an MRI, and I was diagnosed with a herniated L5S1. The treatment was a combination of exercise, rest, and cortosone shots in the surrounding tissue when I had bad flare ups. This seemed to work, at least enough to let me live with the pain. I was about 50% as active as I was before the injury.

Over the next 10 years, I have maybe 6 episodes of back pain so severe that I missed work for anywhere between 3-6 days. Nothing too serious, or long lasting, but pretty bad. And getting more frequent as the years passed. By 2002 I was about 25% as active as I was before the injury.

In November of 2002, something changed. I no longer had leg pain, not even that sharp butt pain, but everything was squarly centered in the middle-to-right side of my back, right around the belt line. This scared me - the pain was much more severe, harder to control with rest and exercise, and I once again found myself missing work. This time it was 6 weeks (thank GOD for short term disability!) of physical therapy and rest rest rest. Even when that was over, and I went back to work in early December of 2002, I knew that I was in big trouble.

The next 12 months were horrible. My pain levels went way up and my activity levels bottomed out. I couldn't wait to come home from work and climb into bed. Not a good way to live!

All along, I was being taken care of by my Orthopedic Sports doctor. He was great - he'd fit me in whenever I need to see him, we exchanged Emails about my condition frequently, and he was very supportive. Starting in about 1997, he started mentioning this new procedure that was coming to the USA - Artificial Disc Replacement. He (and I) never even considered a fusion - up until 2002 the pain was manageable and as long as there was *hope* for something else he encouraged me to wait it out. Finally, in November of 2003, in the midst of another setback, he finally sent me along to see Dr Casden and Dr Bitan of the Beth Israel hospital in NYC.

{OK - this is where I need to stop typing. More later - I promise!}