Any of you ever had back surgery?

[mjr]

Go to a physical therapist before you decide on anything major. Make absolutely damn sure its structural and even then. You'd be surprised how many horrific sounding/feeling things with the back are not actually horrific permanent damage that needs corrective surgery.

A sliding vertebra towards the base of the lower back is a thing, yes, and its a thing that can be treated non-surgically first. Unless its degenerative.

I did the whole "oh god my back is destroyed I need to be cut open" when my back seemingly went fubar on me ( resulting in years of pain and what not afterwards ) and it turned out to not be horrific spine damage as I neurotically envisioned. But had I not gone to a physiotherapist and found that out I would have likely kept thinking I blew a disk or something too, yes.

I think that's what I'm going to do. Get an MRI or something, and then see if Physical therapy will fix it.

It does seem an awful lot like this image:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spondyl...olisthesis.jpg

from the wiki article. Although I haven't had an MRI to confirm.

I do have to wonder, though, if this isn't degenerative, because I think I know when the initial trauma that may have caused this happened.