to be fair, after my first set of Cat Scan's the doctor asked me if I had ever fractured a vertebrae before, I said not that I knew of, and he said that it looked like I may have previously but that it's relatively common for people to carry on their daily lives with stable compression fractures and recover without them ever knowing they'd had that injury other than a 'sore back'…and also to be fair,
Same thing happened to me. It wasn't until I broke by L5 that I found out that I had previously broken by L4. About 6 weeks to recover each time and about 3 months off from riding but listen to your doctor. Good physio and listening to the doctor was really the defining thing in recovery the 2nd time. The first time I didn't know it was broken so I had years of back pain that went away after the 2nd break. The Idiot Doctor never saw the break the first time so he sent me home with a prescription for T3s and I didn't get proper treatment.