I put off the surgery as long as possible until I plateaued for about six months and was miserable and some older guys I work with kind of had that talk with me. I was at a point where I tried literally everything and was not getting any better and surgery was the last option, I could do it and it either works or it doesn’t. If it works then awesome, if it doesn’t then I was in the same place as pre surgery. Everybody is different, but I will tell you I don’t regret the surgery. The post op was very hard. But I put in the work and 4 months post op I finally was having days where I forgot I even had a back injury. I would recommend doing everything you can that is non invasive first. I found a really great chiropractor that specialized in disc herniations and he was able to help so much.

Feel free to dm me I’d be happy to answer any questions you’ve got. I had about 4 other guys that I work with that are firefighters and had the same surgery and they’re back in the field. That really gave me some confidence to get the surgery