In my spine my L5-S1 and L4-L5 are herniated (as of 2017, haven’t checked if any more are). Full on herniated, not bulging. It started when I was 20, and my doctor said surgery should be avoided since it could impact my quality of life significantly at my age (not that my QoL wasn’t already severely impacted). Epidurals and physical therapy didn’t help.

Back then it wasn’t miserable 24/7 but it had it’s moments. Eventually I had an “episode” where I was bedridden in immense amounts of pain for a solid week. During that desperation I found the IDD option and started that. It was rough back then at the start. But within weeks the constant pain died down and I recovered mobility as well as my sciatica improved.

Through… Losing a job I discovered the effects wear off after 2ish months and I start being susceptible to the episodes and random function loss again, so now I just go weekly to keep things peachy. It isn’t full recovery obviously, I still wind up in pain if I do too much with my back, even stuff as little as bending over slightly to do the dishes (because I’m tall), but it beats being disabled in constant pain… Those few episodes I’ve had haunt me. Being so helpless I couldn’t even.