Thanks. My last MRI was about 4 years ago I think, when I had a serious of painful back spasms that had me pretty much able to drive and get to work and that's it. I literally crawled across the floor from kitchen to couch on Christmas that year after a spasm walking out of the kitchen made it too painful to stand up
. I figured the first step is probably new MRIs. I'm going to call the Ortho clinic where I had my steroid injections a few years ago and start asking around. MRIs, unfortunately, don't show much. While laying down for any extended period starts to hurt after 20-30 minutes, it doesn't seem to show much useful on the MRI.
One thing I'm really afraid of is that I've waited too long. I keep reading about contraindications if you've got other bad discs or other issues. I've been compensating for issues for so long I've got pain in my hips and other spots in my low back as well. Chiropractic has helped these "secondary" things just fine, but the problems have definitely increased in the last 2-3 years. I going to be hugely depressed if I'm disqualified for an ADR basically because I didn't have an ADR soon enough.
Is there a trick to finding the best surgeon in town other than cold calling ortho/neuro places and tracking who gets recommended the most?