@barbb: My family has overcome several health issues that could have been far more devastating. As a kid, I had a ruptured appendix, thought it was the flu, went around with peritonitis for almost three months, and then was really, really sick. When I got pregnant, I thought I must have cancer, as I'd been told that I'd never be able to have children. When my father was 64, he took a fall from a ladder, shattered five vertebra in his back, crawled across the street and up onto a porch to ask the people to please call an ambulance. He was a self-employed house painter with zero insurance, so, instead of months in a Stryker frame in the hospital, they slapped him into a cast and sent him home. He was back painting houses a few months later while Sen. Ted Kennedy, who had broken his back the same week, was still having serious problems. My son, born two months early, started having discs in his back degenerate at 15. He's had two removed, but is very active, does back exercises every day and some form of strenuous activity daily, like "walking" five miles during lunch hour. I've fought Meniere's much of my life; thanks to daily VRT I still do instream fish surveys for our state fish agency in a wilderness location--at 77. My daughter, now 50, says that it's taking far too long to recover from a bone graft in her foot as the ortho promised she'd be playing soccer again this spring, but she still needs more PT work over a year after the surgery. Bunch of tough shanty Irish!
My husband, on the other hand, is hopeless. He had one disc surgery 11 years ago, flatly refuses to do PT or any exercise and is in terrible shape. He felt much better, was less cranky, a couple of years ago when I drove him two hours each way to biweekly PT. The PT gal finally gave up because he refused to do work at home, and he's far, far worse and in serious pain--but insists that he can't do anything because (whine) "it hurts." AARGH! Now he splits his time between his damned recliner and the couch, reading, watching TV, all day every day. I still have a few graphics clients, do all the housework plus all the outside work to keep the house and acreage in shape. I'm too lazy to cut and split enough wood to heat entirely with the Earth stove, but I do provide enough to have a good fire every morning to start the day off with a cozy warm house with less reliance on the backup electric heat.