country and the smart thing is, for most of us, you hurt your back, take two or three months, over the counter nsaids, you re going to be better. you might need an mri or ct scan if it doesn t get better, but surgery is last resort and all the good surgeons will tell you the same thing. isn t an mri one of the biggest right now if i went and got an mri on my back they re going to tell me five things. yes. that s the scary thing, by nature, mris reveal problems that are there, but aren t there. they allow us to see everything so you have to you have to think, if i find something, is it a fas know ma, it s just there, incidental or the root of my trouble. if we all got scanned, we would all have things wrong with us. so at least for back pain, conservative measures make sense at least for the two to three months. the time you see a surgeon, is if suddenly you have numbness and tingling, loss of bowel