I did it! It took a lot of hard work and determination, but I did it! I avoided my third back surgery! It took a year, but I am back to exercising regularly and doing what I love!

It all started in December 2010: I was working out in my gym when I ripped my right hamstring (back of the leg) during an exercise. I heard a sound, felt the pain and had to stop exercising. I lay down, raised my leg and put ice on it, but by the next day it was worse.

I went to my doctor’s office, but my doctor wasn’t there. So I saw someone else, who misdiagnosed me and told me it was my sciatic nerve. I left his office slightly confused, but I went to a chiropractor for treatment.

After two weeks of regular treatment, I continued to get worse. I went back to my doctor, who gave me the right diagnosis – a badly torn right hamstring. He recommended a physiotherapy clinic.

I started physiotherapy in mid-January, but my physiotherapist didn’t believe my hamstring tear was the problem and insisted on treating me for a back injury rather than a leg injury.

I continued to get worse. During this phase, I kept going back to my doctor, not understanding why I wasn’t getting any relief.

He ordered an MRI. I had to wait a month.

By March, I was on heavy painkillers regularly, just to be able to function, and I spent every spare minute in bed, away from my family. I was having flashbacks to 1998, when I spent six weeks on my floor unable to move, waiting for my first back surgery.

I repeatedly asked my physiotherapist to treat my leg, and he refused, telling me it was my back causing the pain in my leg, not the other way around. Then my doctor told me the MRI results showed a re-herniation of L5 disc, right side, and I had to see a surgeon. I told him I wasn’t having a third back surgery. He referred me to Dr. Rebecca Henry.

Want to learn more? Read about my road to recovery next month.