Alternative to the "Walking helps the pain!" Advice please

Hello! I (28f) am just looking for general advice to deal with pain that isn't being covered by what I am already doing.

I currently have a 2cm bulging disc on my L5-S1. Yes I do mean cm and not mm. My doctor originally told me mm and them profusely apologized for the error.

We do not know what caused this. Looking through the last few years we cannot pinpoint a moment where I fell or overworked myself to make this happen.

I currently cannot walk for longer than 30 seconds without being in large amounts of pain. The outside of my calf, ankle, and foot is numb. Even with this people keep saying things like "Oh, walking makes all sciatica better! Just walk" and "I'm sure if you walked more you can fix the pain!".

It's very annoying and my back doctor has no opinion on if walking will help or not.

I am currently going to physical therapy and getting traction twice a week. It is helping immensely and I used to not be able to stand let alone walk for 30 seconds. I am also taking gabapentin and acetaminophen per my back doctors orders.

This all helps to a point, but I still have issues doing normal daily activities like getting food or going to work. Currently I am working by laying on a yoga mat in my office and using my laptop, but the drive is only 8 minutes and while the pain has also diminished a lot it still hurts about the same as standing and walking.

I guess I just want anyone's recommendations or general advice for working through this. It's been about a month of PT and is working! But I'm worried it's going to stagnant at some point and I'm kinda scared of that happening.

EDIT Please stop immediately suggesting surgery. I want to exhaust all other options first and so far PT seems to be working pretty well. It's been since mid July and things have improved so much compared to before, even if it sounds like hell in my post.