Dear Practo user , Let’s us first understand your disease and than we will move to treatment . Disc disease ( protrusion, extrusion , internal disc disruption,sequestration or mild bulge ) is most due to degenerative process and sometime it can be traumatic. We do not have any medicine in this world to put back part of disc which is pinching your nerves . Hence mostly doctor advise for pain killer , pain killers and some nerve drugs like pregabalin , gabapentin etc . All these drugs are only to ameliorate symptoms but don’t address the disease at all. Arround 60-70% patients with back pain gets relief on these medicine and stop thinking of disease . In due course of time pain again comes back and this cycle of medicine and relief keep on continuing till disease progress to level where medicine don’t help. The idea should be to understand the disease at first , inadequate knowledge of disease by many spine treating specialist puts patients in bad condition and many times patient also wants only medicine than understanding disease and taking proper treatment for it . Now coming to your condition as you have paracentral herniation at L5-S1 on left side which must be pressing your traversing nerve root and you may have pain in left leg posterior( back) aspect due to S1 nerve compression and occasional pain in lateral aspect ( side of leg) due to foraminal compression of Left L5 nerve root . For these condition there is no medicine yet in this world which can cure the disease. So advise would be as follows : 1- Selective root sleeve block if protrusion is small . Some medicine is injected to give you relief without giving pain killers orally . This will give relief but doesn’t address disease to that extent . 2- Endoscopic Discectomy : it’s the most advanced and minimally invasive treatment for such disc where a small camera and instruments are put inside and disc which is pinching the nerve is addresses . Here disease is address than symptoms and patient can go back to normal activity within 2-3 days . Success rate of endoscopic discectomy is around 90-95% 3- Open Microdiscectomy : in case endoscopic discectomy is unavailable in your area as barely 40-50 doctors are trained in india to do it , one can go for open spine surgery ( micro lumbar discectomy ) and get it treated . Success rate of open discectomy is around 50-60% 4-Fusion / fixation generally not required for such case if there is no instability . Have tried explaining you disease and treatment options . Hope it helps

Please show to  a neurosurgeon for second opinion I feel you will be alright by medicines