Thank you for the article John. I too had a pinched nerve in the L4-L5 area. Mine was in 2019 and I recovered enough to compete, very slowly, in the 2022 National Senior Games. It sounds like you've had a rougher time of it though. If you have time this is the article I wrote about my back experience.

https://medium.com/runners-life/i-ran-an-entire-mile-499b2bfb104e?sk=cf608f1b229cdffc38e7041d19673d94