Over the course of the next few weeks, the pain intensified so I started getting some physical therapy treatment which while alleviating the pain, didn't resolve the underlying issue ... whatever that happened to be.
I continued through the pain and successfully completed my first half ironman race and started training for my first marathon in the autumn of 2006. During my marathon training, for some reason, I felt little to no back pain. I successfully finished the marathon (3:45hr for those interested) and decided to take some time off from training after that.
At this point the pain intensified and I started seeing the physical therapist more and more, including some acupuncture treatment. Some days I won't feel any pain at all, other days I'd have sudden sharp pains in my lower back - very much like someone stabbing me in the spine. The pain didn't last long, but was intense and debilitating.
The physical therapist agreed that while we were temporarily relieving the pain, we weren't fixing the underlying condition, so we decided to get an MRI scan to investigate the cause further
The MRI scan revealed that I had the following conditions:-
- Mild degenerative disc disease between L4 and L5
- A bulging disc between L4 and L5
- Mild stenosis
