@msrobotics My comments about being careful with chiropractors is to be cautious about manipulation on damaged discs. Many other people read these posts and may not know they have a bad disc. It’s good that your chiropractor asked for imaging. My point is that you don’t know how weakened a disc may be until it fails. Some indicators might be the disc has lost height or some instability that allows the vertebrae to slip past each other a bit. All I was doing was turning my head and my disc ruptured. Muscle spasms can cause a lot of shifting of vertebrae and realignment takes the pressure off. There are gentle ways to do that. If a disc ruptures, you are on the way to more problems. It may be not so bad, but it may be bad and cause pain and get worse in time stimulating bone spurs to grow. Electric stimulation of the nerve roots in the problem areas may help reduce pain. That helped me with reduced pain for a week prior to my spine surgery. Regardless, patients need to advocate for solutions and educated choices if there are deficits or disabilities that may be able to be improved through surgery or physical therapy. When physical therapy fails to help, it may be time to consider surgery. Insurance companies often require physical therapy to access how significant the problem is. As a patient, the choice is yours. If you don’t have surgery, you need to know what may happen and how fast your condition may worsen or if the condition will become permanent. Disability affects the entire family when you can’t take care of yourself, and may cause financial hardship if family members can’t work or caregivers need to be hired, or modifications are needed to the home to accommodate wheelchairs, etc. These decisions can be scary, but not making a decision also may have consequences. Again, this may not your story and you have the choice in what you do. My parents were in wheelchairs and I had to take care of them which was exhausting and it kept me from holding a job when I was the only one taking on the responsibility without help from siblings. That was suddenly thrust upon me when my parents couldn’t manage on their own.