u/556_enjoyer

I'm 25. Back in September I started having mild pain in my butt going down to my knee after attending a convention all week. Towards the end it was bad enough to warrant pain killers but when I went home and rested it was fine. In November I began having tingling and the feeling of my foot being "different" than the other other one, but the pain lessened. I freaked out and got an MRI which showed a diffuse bulge with central protrusion at L5-S1. The pain no longer went down to my knee and only happened when I twisted in/out of cars.

I had been able to live a normal life this whole time, but the pain had been an occasional annoyance, worse in the colder months and never worse than 3/10. I also showed very mild weakness in my foot.

I met an orthopedic surgeon who gave me a steroid shot that worked for 12 days. Afterwards, he told me surgery was my only option because it was a protrusion that my immune system would never be able to reach, if it was going to get better it would have done so by now, and to do surgery sooner rather than later. I also met a neurosurgeon who told me not to get surgery, and another orthopedic surgeon who said he thinks surgery would help for now.

I did light PT for a couple months around this time that didn't have an improvement, but then again I didn't make substantial changes to my life besides losing 15lbs. I still sit (without pain) almost the entire day which I'm sure isn't helping. I no longer get any pain in my butt, or above the knee at all which is odd. I just have mild pain in my calf when standing without walking, and and my toe is going numb. If things are really aggravated, I walk with a limp and have 3/10 tingling pain, but this happens maybe once or twice a month.

I'm living a relatively normal life, I've been under more distress from the anxiety and rabbit-holing of this procedure than the physical symptoms. I've been doing daily research for 6 months, and the more I read the more I get wary about surgery. My main concerns are;

• You can get epidural fibrosis (scar tissue binding to nerve roots) from surgery. It's painful, permanent, and cures are limited.
• Re-herniations are rare, but if it happens to me I'll be in way worse pain than I am now with my little protrusion.
• I don't know if I'll ever be allowed to do certain things again like rollercoasters.

I'm tired of this being on my plate, and want to be back to normal but at the same time I feel like I'm doing better than 95% of people who get this surgery and I haven't put in a ton of work into trying to get this done naturally, but then again, I don't think that's possible given the nature of my herniation. It's gone on for 7 months and has made life less enjoyable, but it hasn't ruined it. But getting epidural fibrosis definitely could ruin my life. There's horror stories on reddit of people asking the same questions I did, having the same concerns I did, and then you check their post history and they end up regretting surgery.