plenty of minor injuries over the years surfing and snowboarding, but the first major one that I'm pretty sure set things in motion was landing on the back of my head from a couple of metres up in the air after doing a jump on a snowboard. Didn't have to have surgery, and didn't have it MRI'd (not sure they existed back then) but always had aggravating neck pain since that injury.

Second one was surfing, driven headfirst into a sandbank, was paralysed from the neck down for a while underwater and thought I was probably going to drown but the movement came back in my legs first then in my arms. That was the first time I experienced very painful dermatome pain in the hands.

I think the knock from the snowboarding fall was actually a worse one than the surfing fall, but the surfing one must have been a more direct impact, and I suspect the disc was already out because I'd had neck pain for ages beforehand and always wondered if I was at more risk of injury as a result, and it seems that I was.