Disc damage and nerve root impingement is a *****. I have struggled with it for years and learned a few things. I still have some things to learn.
First off, everybody's injury is different, you will need to figure out what works for you, as what works for other folks may not.
If October was the inciting injury, then surgical intervention will likely not be the way to go, as it is chronically irritated, a little inflamed and has months of organizing fibrosis pulling on everything in there including the nerve root. At least this is what the data shows (surgery/discectomy best in the acute phase after the injury, less so if chronic). The epidural steroid injections can be helpful, but usually only get you through a tough patch and are temporary. They don't heal anything structural. Often they'll do a trial of a few ESI's spaced out by a few weeks, and then reassess an acute injury to see if it is surgical or not. At least that's what we do in practice down here.
While there are a thousand different tricks to help decompress a disc/nerve/sciatica, the one thing I strongly recommend is you get plugged in with a good physical therapist who can help you with flexibility and core strength, and follow a gently progressive program to the letter. Later on when you're healed and in maintenance mode, yoga would be a good maintenance program, but with a hot disc I wouldn't turn yoga loose on it.
Physical therapy can be kind of a mind screw with chronic injury rehab. The pace of noticeable progress can be mind-numbingly slow, but most patients see slow steady progress, even if they're just improving flexibility while the injury heals. PT is the most useful core strategy for most folks with chronic injuries (according the current data), and then you use a few other secondary strategies at the same time to support it. Those might be acupuncture, traction, NSAID's or other anti-inflam meds, herbal supplements, prayer, higher forms of fish worship, running for government office, saving doomed whales, etc. Dabble in the secondary strategies and figure out what works. Then months from now, when it's stable and at whatever your steady state is, stay on top of the maintenance, and don't do anything silly to reinjure it.
BTW I don't know what it is about sneezing in the shower, but a lot of people (me included) reinjure their backs by sneezing. That sudden increase in pressure in that spot is potent. So SNEEZE CAREFULLY!
Hope that helps and good luck,
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