Originally Posted by The Bad Cormorant

Bad luck mate.... Is there any reason why your lower spine is in such poor shape? 19 is very young to be starting with this crap. But at 19 you may be young enough to make a good recovery, so don't give up all hope yet, it took me nearly 2 years to get over my first slipped disk.

I started with similar problems to yours 6 years ago when I was 49. my discs at L5/S1 and L5/L4 have loads of problems and the vertebrae in between them is all out of shape with arthritic changes. (the rest of my spine is apparently fairly healthy though) So I have a good idea what sort of pain you may be experiencing, at one point I spent 3 months crawling around on the floor unable to sit or stand for pain in the leg.

I too was very active until that point with hill walking and climbing and it was a real wrench having to give them up. Luckily I found cycling was something that I could do that did not cause pain so I took that up as my hobby - think I have done 13,000 mile since.

I would guess you are going to have to give up contact sports, but I am sure there are loads of other stuff you could get yourself into, from what I understand keeping fit and active is the best thing you can do for back problems - try starting off with something like Pilates to get some good core strength and get some good medical advice of what activities you could get into.