Im to young for this!!
I was in a car that rolled 12 times end over end in high school, lucky to be alive. Suffered for a long time without doing anything about it cuz I was "too tough" to complain about it. Finally, when I started falling down randomly I was sent by a friend to a chiropractor. OOOOHHHHH YYYYAAAAHHHHH!. Forgot what it was like to be able to move pain free. I used to go 2x per week. Turns out I had a bulged disc at L5 and severe sciatica (sp?). About 5 years ago I bought one of the Teeter hang ups where you can either hang from you ankles or recline to just about any angle. Well I keep that in the bedroom and pretty much every night before bed a quick 5 minutes upside down to kind of "reset" my back and man it pays big dividends. Now I only go to the chiropractor when I do something stupid in my neck and can't seem to get it worked out. For what it's worth, I play competitive softball 2 nights a week in the summer and volleyball 2 nights/week in the winter. I am also an electrician by trade and have helped all of my friends build everything from 3k square foot houses to 10k sqaure foot shops and have poured concrete on the side as well. Sure, some days are a ***** and I have to spend a little extra time throughout the day stretching, but I can still run circles around some of the younger guys at work who can't seem to run their mouth and hands at the same time.
One thing that I will caution you about is the pain meds. Be careful taking them, the pain is there to remind you that you're doing something stupid and you need to back off. I never take any pain meds until the work is done, and even then I try and skip them as much as possible.
The best motivation for me has always been someone telling me that I can't.
Keep your head up, it's a long journey but a hell of a ride!