A Year After Spinal Surgery, A $94,000 Bill Feels Like A Backbreaker

Spinal surgery made it possible for Liv Cannon to plant her first vegetable garden.

"It's a lot of bending over and lifting the wheelbarrow and putting stakes in the ground," the 26-year-old says as she surveys the tomatillos, cherry tomatoes and eggplants growing in raised beds behind her house in Austin, Texas. "And none of that I could ever do before."

For the first 24 years of her life, Cannon's activities were limited by chronic pain and muscle weakness.

"There was a lot of pain in my legs, which I can now recognize as nerve pain," she says. "There was a lot of pain in my back, which I thought was, you know, just something everybody lived with."

Cannon saw lots of doctors over the years. But they couldn't explain what was going on. She'd pretty