I entirely agree with "Dubious" that MRI results by themselves can be somewhat meaningless when it comes to pain, in fact my initial post demonstrates this quite well - little change in MRI findings but a world apart in symptoms! - (I guess the body just gets used the changes and either stops sending false signals to the brain or the brain ignores the false information.?)

But my initial post was not intended to be about interoperating MRI results with regard to pain. I am more curious as to if the intervertabal discs ever heal and return to normal. Even with the lack of symptoms from that disc I was a little disappointed that the disc was pretty much in its flattened, bulging dehydrated mess it was in several years previous.