As long as we are acting like old farts and talking about health issues I will share my back pain story.

I used to manufacture and install concrete burial vaults in the ground. Very hard physical work, but never a problem. Getting 3000 pound concrete boxes across cemetery lawns into a hole in the ground through mud and snow was hard physical work but it never affected my back at that time. Then I buy a manufacturing business's assets and while welding conveyor track I apparently did something to my back. Nothing immediate, but that evening I had pain like I never experienced before.

I got the muscle relaxants and pain pills and the pain got worse. I was in bed and could not find any position to lay that wasn't painful. When everything below my belt shut down and I couldn't pee, poop, or move I knew it was time for an ambulance. I forced them to drive 20 MPH because every bump was like an ice pick in my back and left leg.

As soon as I got to the emergency room I got a shot of something that knocked me out. Darvon I think. In the middle of the night I woke in pain again and the nurse gave me another shot. When I woke up in the morning, no pain. I had to pee so I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. I could feel the cold on my right foot, but no feeling on the left foot. I walked to the bathroom and did my thing and felt zero pain. The only difference was I had no feeling along the outside of my left leg all the way down to the foot. Still don't. But I didn't have pain, and to this day I have never had a recurrance of pain which was in 1984 so I guess the issue was resolved.

The lack of feeling has made some changes in how I function. I can't feel how much pressure I put on my foot so I flat spotted a tire on the plane. I now use my eyes to gauge how much brake pressure I apply. The bottom line is I will accept a numb leg and foot for that pain any day. Until I had back pain I thought my employees that complained about it were malingerers. Not any more.