Well, after reading stories of others here and other forums - I should consider myself quite OK
My first encounter with herniated disk was in 2004 - didn't even know what this means back then... Was playing with my son and did bizarre sideway run - next day couldn't move from the pain in the back and legs - thought that did something to my muscles, took painkillers, spend couple days in bed and started exercising and in a month or so was quite ok - only had leg pain from time to time - didn't go to any doctors at that time. Eventually decided that everything is back to normal and stopped my exercises. In 2006 back pain came back - this time I decided to go to see a specialist - and until this date still cannot decided if I made the right choice or not. Anyway first got only X-rays, injections (not ESI), massage etc. This didn't help at all, in fact I was getting worse. Got MRI done which showed huge central herniation, however doctors advised against operation at that time and sent me to rehabilitation instead. Tried ESI's but they didn't make any difference. One day I got real strong massage I couldn't stand straight anymore and next MRI showed that herniation increased again :/ In addition to pain being only in left leg I started having it in the right one as well. Since all this was going on for months already - doctors suggested to do operation. Initially I was also thinking about Alphaklinik, send my MRI's to them, got quotation (I think it was something like 8-9K euro), however at the same time I discovered German forum - and there Alphaklinik wasn't something spectacular - some had very good experience, some not, some had to be operated second time elsewhere. Also found some statistics that showed that patients after endoscopic operations had the highest probability to be operated second time. And also my insurance was covering only half the cost at Alphaklinik, so in the end I decided to look at my other options and decided to go with Orthozentrum München (not sure if I'm allowed to put links to other sites - but here you can see comparison between German hospitals regarding amount and kind of yearly spine operations
http://www.diebandscheibe.de/umfragen/adressen_kh.php ). Operation lasted around 30 mins, went OK, however few weeks after it I started having burning pain in both of my legs - never had it before in my life. In addition to burning pain I started having leg muscles spasms, bizarre sensations etc. Got MRI done again which didn't show anything special except some scar tissue (btw. scar tissue is the biggest fear in German forum, I didn't see much about it here) - however it didn't explain pain in the right leg and next MRI couple months latter didn't show scar tissue anymore. Got my nerves measured (forgot how it's called - where they put needles in your muscles
) - that showed some delays but nothing extraordinary. Nobody could find anything... in the end I end-up with pain management doctor who put me on all sort of different stuff - Neurotin, Katadolon, Novalgin, Cymbalta etc. - not sure if they really helped or just made easier to deal with a pain - since I was half asleep most of the time. 6 months latter legs got better and I slowly stopped taking everything. I was feeling so great that decided that I'm fit enough to help my friend to fix his bike - and ended up with second herniation in the same place - however much smaller than first one and a month latter was again OK. And once again I had stupid idea that I'm fit and decided to carry my son on shoulders a bit... A week latter my long forgotten burning pain came back... And this is where I'm now - burning pain changing with extremely cold legs - not sure if it's related, but never had them before operation... Now exercise in the morning and the evening and consider options for the future since L4/L5 is completely black as well...