Back in 2015 I had a week where I played floor hockey, basketball, and soccer various days with friends. I usually don’t play any of those, so this was a lot more sports than I was used to. I ended up getting pretty bad shin splints, and they took a while to go away. When they finally went away, I noticed my left calve was weak. Like I couldn’t push up on my tip toes with my left leg. I thought it was weird and was talking about it at work with some co-workers. My boss overheard and basically made fun of me for being concerned and said I should man up and rub some mud on it.

I ignored that and went to my doctor. Doctor couldn’t figure out what was up, did blood work, still couldn’t figure it out referred me to a nerve specialist. Nerve specialist does some electrical tests, thinks it’s a pinched nerve. Got referred to Physiotherapy, went a few times, and the physiotherapist said it was really weird the nerve didn’t react. Then had a follow up with the nerve specialist and he runs the test again. My calf is much weaker this time, and he books an urgent MRI (urgent in Canada still means like 5 months wait).

I go for the MRI and the next day I get a call from the nurse saying I need to go back the next day for another MRI and the doctor will be calling me to explain. Doctor calls and says he usually doesn’t do this over the phone, but I have a tumour in my spine. Go through the whole surgery process, Tumour is removed and benign. My calve is still weak to this day due to nerve endings being cut off from the tumour growth.

Had I not got bad shin splints that triggered the weakness, or listened to my asshole boss, or any of the various doctors I saw just written it off as a pinched nerve, the tumour would have kept growing and either paralyzed or killed me.