Degenerative Discs?

I have two degenerated discs, meaning they have lost their a lot of their water content. One of them has herniated, and is compressing my L5 nerve root. The other is bulging, but not compressing the nerve. I'm having surgery on the L5 disc in two weeks. Now to my questions.
1. When they cut the herniated portion of the disc out, will it heal itself back to a fairly normal condition?
2. Is it possible to bring water back into the discs after they have degenerated?
Answer:
They will take out the abnormal part of the disc that is pressing on the nerve. That part is doing you more harm than good because it's not in the right place anymore. The opening in the disc where that is removed will scar over but the disc will not return to normal. You will always have less disc at that level. So - as I suspect your doctor has told you, there is a slightly higher risk that you'll have a problem at that level again (as compared to someone that has a normal disc there.)
It's not possible at this point to bring water back to the discs - but the research goes on to treat degenerative discs, including things like nucleus replacement (which is the part of the disc where the water is)
Good luck to you.
Edit: Someone answered that disc replacement is experimental (to date). This is not correct. While nucleus replacement is in research, the FDA has approved 2 lumbar disc replacement implants - the Charite (http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/answers/20... and the ProDisc (http://www.spine-health.com/research/dis... by Synthes. An artificial cervical disc by Medtronic also received FDA approval recently.

---

They would probably replace the disc depending how bad with a cadaver piece screwed in or a hip bone piece which is not recomended.

---

With respect to the answer given by the person above, that's actually wrong - doctors do not "replace" part of a disc either with a cadaver piece or a piece of hip bone. To date, disc replacement is an experimental procedure. There is no actual material available that can accurately mimic disc material. Surgeons have experimented with titanium "cages" that are inserted in the disc space, to help maintain distance between vertebrae. To date, these surgeries are not done routinely, and, done electively, are very expensive (on the order of $20,000 per disc).

---