"my back feels fine, all the symptoms are in my right thigh"

It's called "referred pain" - drove me nuts till I understood and accepted what was the cause and adjusted my life accordingly - at the young age of your 20s you want to burn energy, not lie around...

My left hip is complicated by arthritis too - the two lots of pain symptoms overlap! The recent discoveries about green lipped mussels and shark fin - and their synthesised products help keep things (even the disk hassles a bit!) a bit under control, provided I don't 'push it' ...

Same major area as you Spaw, and I got some lesser thoracic and cervical areas too - but surgery is not recommended as the first thing - they really like to make sure that the situation is stable - I had years of hassle till I worked on getting adequate tone in my spinal rotators - then things got a lot easier.