With spine... there is no such thing as a cure all. Many patients have excellent success... some just go back to their lives and forget they ever had a spine problem. But, heading down the road of spine surgery is a very serious undertaking. My wife and I just went through the decision makine process... you are about 8 months behind her.
You may be able to wait it out... some people will just get better. When my wife was 2 months post injury, the advice we got was that if she was still getting worse, the likelyhood that she'd be one of the lucky ones to just have the herniation reabsorb was very small. She did endoscopic discectomy that was very well done and seemed to be successful, but after 2.5 months, she started going downhill again and recently had ADR.
You have much to learn and to think about... do your homework... make informed decisions.
All the best,
Mark
PS... just bumped this thread to the top for you
http://www.ispine.org/forum/showthread.php?t=393