TreeFrog,
I was just reading your thread.
Back pain may not be life-threatening, per say, but if you cannot exercise, have high pain levels and have stress along with that, that is not good for you. It is all relative. You do really have to look at what your pain level is without medication.
Pain is also subjective, so your 5/10 may be another person's 8/10. It does boil down to quality of life.
One of the things you may want to ask the surgeons is how degenerative your discs are. I notice on the MRI a year ago??? that you have endplate changes at L4/5. Degenerative discs can self fuse, going bone to bone, and when they do, it doesn't sound like something you want to have happen.
Maybe, I would ask the doctor to have you get another MRI and compare the two and see if there are any changes since the last one.
I would definitely go in with a list of questions and they should answer them. If you can, I would try to get a third-opinion as you will learn more about your options speaking to more doctors.
If you can go to a John Hopkins neurosurgeon, you might want to try that. It is up to you.
Even ask the surgeons their percentage of success with different surgeries.
I wish you good luck and I hope you find a surgeon that is the right fit.
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