Hello, so I’ll just give the whole run down. I’m in the military and ride boats for a living we had to push in a large boat in May and hit it really hard, the next day or so I had bad lower back pain but I just thought it was a muscle strain or something so I blew it off, pain was still there I had to drive across country due to transfer season, started working and then my sciatica started. Got MRI and I had a L5/s1 herniation instead of a muscle strain. Sciatica made me want to cut my leg off , I received an injection in October which has most of the sciatica pain gone but I can still feel it in my check from time to time and my calf muscle is really tender when I see my range of motion and bend over feels as if my backs going to explode out. But I saw a good surgeon and he said I could get surgery and now that it’s time to schedule it I’m on the fence, but if I don’t and go back to riding on the boats bending over in the engine room conduct my pt test which require 40 sit-ups in a minute and times 1.5 mile run I feel it’s not benefiting me and will just cause sciatica flare up to come back even faster.I’ve been doing physical therapy since the flare up, not really much has helped and haven’t really progressed in it. I have been able to walk much more tho! Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I do have the picture of mri but not any of the medical notes and stuff which I why I didn’t post the picture