It feels like I've always had back pain. I chalk it up to the fact that I have a bit of a pony keg hanging off of my torso where a six pack should be. The back pain is something that I've always just assumed as a given. I strained my back lifting a box of books at Borders a long time ago and just assumed that I'd always have a bit of chronic back pain.
Leg pain on the other hand is a bit different. Over the last couple years I'd get sore in my hip and it'd radiate down my leg. Soon my knee was always sore and then my ankle was always sore. I chalked this up to me favoring my back.
A few months ago I found that my right leg would feel like it fell asleep at random times. I'd be in the middle of walking and all of a sudden it would feel like it was taking a nap. This sensation was a bit more worrisome. I thought it was a circulation problem and went to the doctor.
My doctor couldn't figure out what was going on. He had me get x-rays done on my back and my knee but they didn't show anything too abnormal. So he had me go see an orthopedic specialist. They had me get an MRI (which I did a couple of weeks ago) and that showed that I have a pretty severe bulging disc in my lower back. The discs in your spine are discs of cartilage that are like shock absorbers between the vertebrae.

This isn't my disc but to give you an idea this is kind of what my MRI looked like. The white part is the spinal cord and instead of just pushing into it a little bit the disc pretty much is in so far that it obscures the spinal cord from view in the MRI.
My treatment options are awesome! I can either get back surgery or I can undergo a procedure where they inject the disc with pain medicine to decrease my back and leg pain and steroids to reduce the swelling in the disc.
Here's a description of the procedure. I guess I can do this up to three times in a year. They'll monitor the progress after the first injection. If the injections don't really reduce the swelling the next step would be back surgery, if I was so inclined. The doctor yesterday was trying to convince me that since I'm young and I don't really have any risk factors that surgery might be the preferred method over these injections but I don't know. Back surgery seems like a super last resort.
If this can reduce my back and leg pain (which honestly has limited how much exercise I find myself being able to endure) that would be pretty amazing. I was pretty astounded to find that I don't really have to live with pain.