[annapurna]

In general, everyone's experience is that pain and pathology don't correlate. It's possible for someone to have serious disability and pain for very little detectable damage. The opposite is also true, lots of damage for very little pain.

That said, loss of your lordotic curve suggests that you're at least on the edge of serious problems. Low bone density could explain this, especially given the other concerns you've listed. Have you had that checked with a DEXA scan or similar? As a male you'll have to argue hard to get it checked but it might give you and idea of how severe and widespread any osteomalacia might be.

Unfortunately, everything you've described could be linked to nerve pain from bulging disks, but if that were true Lyrica should have had more effect. It's always possible that you have a poor reaction to Lyrica. It's also possible that the Lyrica helped with one part of the problem but failed to address all of your problems and gave you the impression that it had no effect at all.

I don't have any real suggestions that can help here. You simply have too many problems for a layperson's opinion to be meaningful. You can try a high-level Vitamin D supplement and lots of natural light to see if that changes anything in the way you feel. I'd pick a reasonable time frame if you do so and keep a health journal to see if you really feel different.

If you do ultimately pursue surgery, you're going to need to regain as much fitness as possible. At the point you're describing in your post, surgical recovery would be extremely lengthy and very difficult. Anything you could do to permit a bit more activity per day and improved health will be paid back if you do ultimately pursue some kind of high level intervention.

Do you smoke? There's a thread here talking abut research linking degenerative disk disease, especially for multiple disks at a time. If you don't smoke but are exposed to second-hand smoke, you might also want to check into the research. No one knows if second-hand smoke would be as bad, but it can't be helping your disks.

Laura mentioned having yourself checked for heavy metal levels. You'll typically find that everyone thinks of this as an acute problem but sub-acute levels can lead to long-term musculoskeletal problems. You might also want to read Rich's (AKA Harrison) information about chronic infections, which could also be shown to lead to all of the problems you mention. I wish I had better advice and clearer direction but I suspect that you're going to have to put together a treatment plan (treatment A for x weeks then see if you improve, then try treatment B for y weeks and check again).