Ja ever go to a Doctor?
Yes, I did, as I mentioned in the original post: "and do the same exercises as suggested by the orthoped I'd gone to."
I went to an orthopedic surgeon. There was a small bulge in a disk, too small to be worth the risk of surgery at that point in time (pre-arthroscopic times). His comment about going to a chiropractor was 'if it feels good, do it'.
The bulge is probably still there, the pain is not.
The exercises suggested by the orthopedic surgeon were painful and did not improve things until the chiropractor straightened things out. The other point I was trying to make was that the intial back-cracker chiropractors I saw did not help.