While "mechanical obstruction" has a ton of face validity if you think of this as a wire being cut, the problem is pain itself causes weakness and the biologic wires have remarkable plasticity to combat being cut.
Surgery is not reversible and structural changes can have consequences. The studies that are out there looking at reoperation rates are generally in the 1 - 5 years and are primarily done by folks invested in doing a surgery. The mechanical obstruction issue in older patients is generally not limited to just a disc as there are often also other bony changes that will need addressing.
The microdiscectomy approach is generally an easier recovery, but once a patient starts down the road of having injections/spine surgery, it tends to be a thing they'll need in the future. It may get a person back up to speed faster, and if they are having frank/definable motor fiber issues, then it may prevent further damage.
As with 61N, I primarily see the trainwrecks in pain medicine, so there is some observer bias at play.
Posture, PT to help target the area, OT to help you understand your work environment, CBT/DBT, and anything other than a needle/blade is preferrable.
Reasonable people can argue about discectomies vs laminectomies vs plates vs rods, but that's better to talk with spine surgeons about.
I share an office with a spine surgeon and we talk about cases constantly as we share many patients.
He told me a story once that when he was doing his fellowship, the fellowship director's wife developed acute lumbar radicular pain, with legit drop foot.
The fellowship director wanted conservative care for her first, prior to jumping into surgery, even with this frank motor deficit!
Spine surgery is no joke. Even though the cash grabbing scuz buckets of the world seem to have somehow taken over the field.
E.g. my dad and brother both had cervical radicular pain with no weakness at all that had only been going on for a month or two, no PT/meds/injections yet, etc and both were offered spine surgery
Both resolved in a few months on their own with no intervention (which is the natural history of radicular pain)
Be careful out there...
On the other hand, my younger brother at the end of high school had severe lumbar radicular pain (had to drop out of school for a semester and quit his job too, just laid on the floor in our living room mostly, was brutal to watch) for a year and a half and failed everything conservative and eventually had surgery. When you wait that long, even if you decompress the nerve, at times the damage is already done to the nerve, which was the case with him. He has had chronic radicular pain for the last ten years.
So its not a one size fits all deal. An art as much as a science.
But I think your case is very straight forward. I would advise you as I posted above.
Best wishes.
