I hurt my back in '07. I now suffer through a 'back event' at least once per year, lasting about 6 weeks per occurrence. Christmas day, I coughed. MRI shows a herniation at L3/L4 which encompasses approx 50% of the space where the nerve root is supposed to be. The pain comes, it goes. Every morning I wake up hoping I can make it through the day and that the surgeon calls me to schedule surgery.
I did recently find the McGill 3 exercises to strengthen the core. I can't do all three yet, but hope this alleviates the symptoms so I can get to some sense of normalcy while I wait for the surgeon to clear enough of his backlog to get to my microdiscectomy.