Protruding Disk?'s

Have any of you suffered from this and been able to go back to driving without surgery? I have the L5S1 disk protruding and I was told it will be around 6 months before I can go back into the truck. The injury is an old injury from getting run over by an atv when I was 14-15 yo, I'm 24 now. At the moment I'm doing physical therapy to strengthen the muscles but that isn't a permanent fix. I'm worried that I won't be able to go back to work without ending up at square one or worse, rupturing it. I pull a stepdeck hauling hay 95% of the time and the rest are tarped loads. With the hay loads, especially round bales, you have to put all you can to get the strap over the first time or you will be climbing to the top of the load to complete the task. There is also the problem of ratchet positions. The ones on the top deck have to be pushed from the bottom up to ratchet and there really isn't much way around it. The tarped loads aren't so bad but the tarp can be awkward and need a lot of help to be right. I'm thinking all those tasks finished me off and if I go back Ill just do it over again. What do you think, I'm all ears(or eyes).

 

I appreciate the info. I know its a bandaid and I'll probably will mess it up if I go back to work, but I just wanted to see for sure. If I didn't have to put so much into it physically I would probably be okay. Like if I pulled a van, can or something like that. I don't mind having surgery I'm just afraid of it going wrong.

Haha, I know all about needing a new doctor.This is long, but here's the whole story, Woke up and got out of the truck at the rest stop west of Deming,NM, I felt stiff and had moderate back pain but I figured it was just dehydration from watching my trailer get loaded the day before in AZ. Drove up the road for breakfast at the TA in Las Cruses and realized it was hard to walk. I also noticed my knees are swollen pretty bad too. Continued on to Clovis to unload, when I got there I literally had to pull myself out of the truck and hold myself up and shuffle along like a zombie lol. At this point the pain was 12 out of 10 and my lower back area was swollen, tender, and red. Made it back to Amarillo and saw the Dr. at the 24hr clinic. He game me an x-ray( came back clear), shot, muscles relaxers, a paper about sciatica, and said don't drive while using my prescription. My symptoms and pain didn't go away so I went back two days later. This visit I got a steroid shot, a prescription for physical therapy, and he said I could go back to work just keep taking the pills( he told me no driving two days earlier) . I asked him if I could be sent out for an MRI before doing therapy because I didnt want to get messed up more since we didnt know exactly what was going on. He said the insurance would want to wait 6 weeks and then they might do one. He didn't want to mess with it because that is what they would tell him. I spoke to the ins. co myself and repeated what I was told, they ended up giving me the go ahead no questions asked and made the clinic refer me out to get it done. Ins said that if we waited and I were to have something major happen it would cost them more. Got a call a few days later from the clinic and they told me what disc was bad, to do therapy, and they would refer me to a specialist who would go over my options, do's & don't s, etc. Nothing more was said. A week later get the referral in the mail to an anesthesiologist and it said not to eat, have somebody drive you home, called them and they said it was an epidural and they don't go over anything with the patient, never have. Canceled that appt, call the 24hr clinic back, they claim they didn't know that and to continue therapy. The next Monday I start my first day of therapy, these people are very nice and professional. I told them what had happened so far and they didn't seem real happy with my Dr. The pt spent 45 minutes going over everything with me and until this point nobody had gone over my condition with me at all whatsoever. I've done a week of pt and feel way better, but they did say it its not a permanent fix and no work for at least 6 months. I called the clinic back to see what to do after therapy, they replied see us after therapy. This is where I'm at now. On the bright side, I am very impressed with the therapy place. They have been very nice, professonal, helpful, and I feel tons better. I have nothing but good to say about them! I know it was long but that's how it happened.