you could well have two different things going on. Peripheral Neuropathy in the feet and sciatica or something similiar from your back through your legs. This has been going on to me for the last ten days. I have sensory motor axonal PN in my legs from the knee down and in my hands. My feet are dead numb. About ten days ago i started to get the constant pain in the lower back which radiated to the outside right upper thigh made my upper right leg numb. It has slowly been getting better but still hurts today. I have been taking muscle relaxer and aleve. I also have buldging and herniated discs in the lumbar and cervical spine but when i have lower back pain usually its more sharp type of pain then this current one and with the usual lower back pain i can find a comfortable postion to lay down or sit whereas with this there is no comfortable position. Because we have PN we are more susceptible to other nerve related injury or symptoms. Its called the double crush phenomenon. Glenn has posted about this many times here and if you do a search on it on here he explains it in much greater detail than i do.

Basically what im saying is that you can have more than one thing going on. Back surgery may help one but not the other.