I think you got that visual out to everyone in the original letter, dearheart. Do you mean to tell me that the doctors out in the hinterlands where you live are so backwards that they still do procedures as old-fashioned and painful to patients as discograms? I would think that once the doctor had decided the give your hisband that test, he had already decided to also give him the surgery he obviously needed; it makes me wonder what changed his (the doctor's) mind.
When I had my back operated on for a ruptured disk in 1996, my neurosurgeon in Sacramento, California, told me back then that discograms were not the recommended way to evaluate a patient for surgery anymore, and he sent me for an MRI. If your husband was already diagnosed with two ruptured disks, then the physician who decided he was "only going to get 45% relief from his pain" is playing games with your husband and perhaps is simply afraid to do the operation because it is beyond his ability. Physical therapy seems completely inappropriate for a ruptured disk, let alone two of them that have to be surgically repaired, and no doctor can look at the problem and say with ANY certainty EXACTLY what percentage of relief any patient will get from such repair! That is ludicrous!! The surgeon can certainly say that your husband cannot expect to get back to 100% of what he was before, but to make such a broad dismissal of his possible outcome is almost criminal. As for having put him through the pain of the discogram, the Mayo Clinic has this to say about their use:
"Some doctors use a discogram before spinal fusion surgery, to help identify which disks need to be removed. However, discograms are not always accurate in pinpointing which disks, if any, are causing back pain. Many doctors instead rely on other tests, such as MRI and CT scanning, to diagnose disk problems and guide treatment."
God bless you both. You deserve better than you've been getting, and I hope you find it--and soon. My heart breaks for you.