Originally Posted by jimmyn18

This is a serious problem and needs to be addressed ASAP ( dont want to worry you) but sometimes you have to try and push your doctor in the direction you want as it is hard to portray your pain levels sometimes.

If I may give you some advice. I had a 12mm disk protrusion at l4/l5. My advice would be to get surgery on anything over 4mm disk protrusion as soon as possible. The reason I say this is I did physical therapy for 12months 3times a week after being diagnosed with 3 disk protrusion at l3/l4 3mm, l4/l5 12mm and l5/s1 4mm. After my 12months of therapy in order to make the protrusions "go back in" i was faced with an MRI that stated disk protrusions had gone back in at all levels except for l4/l5 there was no change.

Due to waiting so long to have surgery when they opened me up for a discectomy/laminectomy/neurolysis 2months ago my surgeon said it was the worst he had seen in 33yrs of operation. His reason was that my disk had healed while it was still protruding and pressing on the nerve. So scar tissue has wrapped around my damaged nerve from the disk causing irreversable nerve damage! so after surgery i have exactly the same pain as i did before but am adamant if i did it earlier i would have seen much more positive results.

My word of advice dont listen to people who say the disk will heal itelf as that is all well and good if it is in the correct place as if it heals while it is still protruding you are facing a lifetime of pain if left for too long.

Im 19yrs old by the way so all this stuff about age is on your side didnt work for me. My pain was in both legs and I was vomiting every single night for about the first 2months(it got worse at night for some reason) from the pain and no medication worked!