When older adults suffer from chronic back pain, their symptoms often stem from issues that have developed over time like degenerative disc disease or osteoarthritis. An injury to the back, however, can affect people of any age. Still, because back pain is relatively uncommon among young people, it may not be correctly identified at first.
That’s what happened to Mary Halabi. While lifting weights, she overexerted herself and ended up with a herniated disc. “But I thought it was a pulled muscle, so I just ignored it,” she recalls.
Pain from a pulled muscle will resolve quickly, but Mary’s pain only got worse. “I was just really limited as to exercise and recreational activities,” she says. She then began to have trouble even with sedentary activities, finding it difficult to sit through her classes because of the pain she endured.
By the time Mary found the Spine Institute Northwest, “I couldn’t get off the ground,” she recalls. “I was on the floor all day, it was terrible.” A minimally invasive spine surgery helped to correct her injured disc and relieve the pressure on her nerves. Just eight days after her procedure, Mary was back in class!
Hear more of Mary’s story, in her own words: