"whattodo" took the words right out of my mouth! Back and hip issues can obscure one another. Both my daughter and I were evaluated for hip pain by the same ortho doctor; both os us also have back issues. Both of us were rather "written off" by the ortho doc until his own physician's assistant called me to come in for a re-evaluation X-ray because, he said, he recognized how much pain I was in. Long story short, that simple X-ray led right away to hip replacement surgery. My back was not the issue! Daughter is going through the same process now. Each of us has had to be our own determined advocate to find the source and possible solutions for our pain. I say this because the day of one primary doc managing everything is over in medicine. That person has been replaced by the patient, the very person who may feel least able to handle things.