[annapurna]

My wife went through an equivalent thought process. In the year she was diagnosed, she completed a 204 mile in a single day bike race, the next month climbed Grand Teton in the Teton National Park in Wyoming, near Yellowstone NP, and the next month started having pains from DDD and was told that fusion and eventual paralysis would be her fate. Since her L5S1, she's gone back to biking and climbing and just finished a single day climb up Grand Teton. We've both been fighting other things, unrelated to her back trouble, that have limited our training so she isn't back to full strength but it does come back. Sometimes the ADR doesn't bring it all back, but if it is sucessful you will not be limited by the ADR. Other things, such as damage to adjacent tissues, could easily limit you but not the ADR itself, if the surgery is successful.

Running, on the other hand, may need to be limited in your future. Just like Laura's been ordered to use lighter packs and avoid extended descents, the pounding does build up. Many here have taken up with cycling or running on softer stuff. This isn't an absolute so it will be something you and your surgeon work out for you.

No one can tell you to have surgery or not but you seem to have picked out the point that is important here: you're not satisified with the status quo, nor do you believe that conservative care is doing it for you. With that in mind, you need to start looking at surgical options and make your decisions from that standpoint, but don't let yourself be pressured into action without spending the time to think it through.