I would stick with the PT. I have had 3 back surgeries due to sciatic problems in my legs. Even after each surgery it took 6+ months of PT to feel somewhat better.
Get any cortisone shots yet? Try any myofascial massages? Have you tried a traction device?
I regret having all the surgeries and would put it off as long as you can. Girl from my last job did the disc replacement in her neck with minimal pain reduction. Once you have surgery ,that area is compromised ,and could turn into a worse problem when you age.
Keep at the PT. Try everything you can before doing something permanent. Be patient. Especially if this is your first time dealing with this issue. If it has been a problem for years and years...then surgery should be a better option.
You are apparently talking about surgeries at a complete different location from the OP. He has a problem at C6-C7, about the same level as the Adam's apple. Sciatic nerve issues in the legs are caused by problems in the lower back. While a conservative approach may make a lot of sense in any case, these two different locations involve much different considerations.
In 2000, at the age of 34 and long before I took up disc golf, I herniated a disc at the C6-C7 level. It left me in a great deal of pain as the herniation was impinging on the nerve root at on the right side. I lost sensation in my right thumb, first and second finger. It felt as though they had been dipped in wax My tricep was numb and my right shoulder had a burning sensation. If I moved my head, I could induce pain that felt like some one was administering deep electric shock in my spine. I could not lay down on my own. If someone helped me to lay down, I could not sit up. For a week, I alternated between hydrocodone and percocet, every two hours, watching the clock for the last 15 minutes. At night, I slept for short periods in a recliner, upright, after taking a teaspoon of demerol syrup that my father had left over from after an open heart surgery.
I went into the hospital so that I could get an MRI (because I couldn't lay down for the MRI) and need to be sedated in order to get it done. Two days later I had a C6-C7 discectomy and fusion. When I woke up from surgery, it was as if a light switch had been flipped off for my pain. The most painful thing about the post surgery period was the mild irritation in my throat from being intubated. The loss of sensation in the fingers of my right hand never completely resolved, but I don't really notice it unless I think about it and it only involves fine touch.
At the time that the surgery was recommended my neurosurgeon told me that I was lucky that this had had a sudden onset because a slow onset can lead to delay in surgery and more nerve damage, i.e., the sooner the problem was fixed the more likely it was for the nerve damage to resolve. He also told me after the surgery, that the disc had actually ruptured and it would have been very unlikely for the injury to resolve on its own.
6 weeks later, I started swimming instead of therapy to build back my right arm strength. I have lost some of the mobility in my cervical spine. I can neither tilt my head back as far (looking up) or turn it as far to the sides as I could before the injury, but it really hasn't affected me. I started playing basketball, softball and flag football again after the surgery and picked up disc golf in 2012. By 2014, I could regularly throw drives near 400' with occasional throws up to around 430'. Sadly, now, age and knee problems have limited that distance.
Surgery may not be the right thing for you, but I think you will find that there is a large disparity between the satisfaction of patients in outcomes between cervical and lumbar spine surgeries, with most of the cautionary tales being generated by the latter.
