A woman from Northern Ireland went to hospital for a numbing sensation in her leg after a soccer game. She never could have imagined what came next. Mia Constantinou, 28, had just finished playing for her local team, the Ballymoney Ladies, when she felt what she described as a “lightning strike” level of pain down the back of her left leg.
Her partner, Alexs, convinced her to go to the hospital where she had examinations for the sensations in her leg. The doctor gave her suppository medication for pain relief, and she was sent home. Afterward, Mia carried on playing soccer and working as a healthcare assistant, but over the following months, her pain got progressively worse.
She managed to get an appointment with a physiotherapist, but despite being in significant pain, the physiotherapist wasn’t convinced an MRI was necessary. I pretty much begged for him to write a referral,” Mia said. I was completely overreacting and maybe there was genuinely just nothing wrong with me.” Despite the initial dismissal, Mia was referred for a spine and lumbar MRI scan in November 2025.
She received her MRI images through a clinic app, and immediately began comparing them with scans she found on Google. Although she had to wait a week for the official results, she spent that time repeatedly reviewing the images, convinced something looked different. The MRI revealed several problems in her lower back, including small fractures in a vertebra, a slipped vertebra, a bulging disc, inflammation in the joints, narrowing around the nerves, and pressure on a nerve on the left side.
It also showed a benign growth within one vertebra and a fluid-filled cyst in the spinal canal. In April 2026, Mia underwent an L5/S1 spinal fusion, a surgery that permanently joins two bones in the lower spine to improve stability and relieve pain caused by spinal damage. Mia was scared of how she might feel afterward, but also hopeful that she could return to normal life within a few weeks.
Every movement felt worse. I remember trying to stay as still as I could just to avoid the pain.” The next day, hospital physiotherapists encouraged her to walk. Mia’s feet and legs felt foreign to her.
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