Bitflipper@ I am glad to hear that things are gradually getting better. That's what happened with me. It seems like it won't ever improve and then one day you wake up and realize that things are at least beginning to heal.The body has an amazing ability to heal itself. That advice Beepster gave is top notch. Muscle relaxants can help to let things go back into place again. Probably the worst thing you could do is to deaden the pain and then try to do something. I remember in one case a friend of mine had a back injury and took pain killers all day to get through the day. The next day he was in traction because he aggravated the injury even more not feeling the pain. You need meds right now to get through it....just don't try to do too much too soon.
My guess is you have either a slipped disk or a compressed disk. In spite of what you may hear, disks can repair themselves to some extent. The older we get the less resilient they are though.