How I conquered Anxiety, but with a price. 

By Andrew McCoy

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In 2015 I was the fittest I had ever been in my life, I was a young 30 Year old living in the city of Melbourne in my rooftop appartment with one of my best mates. I would wake up early to go to my appartment complex gym for a weights session 

followed by laps in the pool before heading to work. My nights would be filled with seeing friends for dinner, training or playing sport, I loved to travel, Kayak, surf, mountain bike ride and play Basketball, while my weekends would be filled with seeing friends, looking for new bars, weekend adventures aways. I have always been quite confident, had no issue asking someone out for a date or talking in front of large crowds of people while I would also do emcee work on the side, I was really loving life. 

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Then in September of that year after a training session I started getting a pain in the lower Section of my neck, but honestly didn't think much of it and after a day or two it went away and was back training and playing sport, about two weeks later I had a basketball Grandfinal, played reasonable well but I knew something wasn't quite right, a weakness in my right arm and hand that I had never felt before but there wasn't a strong amount of pain. The next day I went to the local Osteo near my office as I didn't have time to book in to my normal physio of 7 years. The Osteo told me to her it looks like it just a cervical facet joint strain and with rest it should be fine after a week or so. By the Sunday I felt great again and decided to go on a Mountain bike ride in what started as a quick 30km ride turned into a 70km ride but afterwards I was fine, until the next morning that is because as I went to get up and have a shower I heard a click in my neck and that was it, I couldn't get up. It was 6am and I couldn't move, by 9am I had got onto my Mum who came and drove me to the hospital, I could walk but ask me to do anything other than that and there was no chance. I got put in for a MRI where I was diagnosed with a badly ruptured disc in the C-5/C-6 Section. I would later find it was most likely the end result from a car accident from 10 years earlier when a B-Double truck changed lanes without looking and dragged me along for 300m before stopping short of a tree, I was so lucky and only came out with a Minor Buldged disc which recovered quite quickly and was back too basketball training within a couple of weeks. Even after that I suffered no Ill effects, If anything it made me live life to the fullest, Over the next 10 years trekking through the Jungles of Northern Thailand and Loas, Mountain biking in Cambodia, Canada and different parts of America, Surfing in Mexico and the West Coast of America, I loved life and nothing really held me back. So when I herniated the disc on that Monday morning it was the first time in a long time that I had felt any type of vulnerability. I was sent to see Neurosurgeon Dr Peter Wilde, as the great surgeon he is wanted to leave surgery as a last resort, for the next 6 weeks I did rehab like I had never done before with the help of medication he pain resided and movement got better but I still couldn't lift my arm over my head and didn't have full feeling in my hand, Peter then sent me for a quarterzone injection into the nerve root C-5 Section of my neck and continued to do another 6 weeks of rehab, by this time it's early 2016 and I have gone 5 months without my normal exercise routine, but worked around it with exercises I could do, the disc wasn't getting any better so went back to Dr Peter Wilde to talk about the last resort, surgery. Dr Wilde reccomended I get the newest surgery available, a disc replacement over the other options and after talking to a few people who had the surgery and went back to sport, including AFL Footballer Nathan Jones I decided to go ahead. I didn't want to hold back in life, I wanted to be able to go back and live life at the fullest again but I was yet to find out how hard that was going to be. But so far the Anxiety hadn't shown it's ugly head yet. 

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A couple of weeks before I had just  meet a great girl, we had gone out for coffee and we got along really well, it was just over year since my last relationship I had gone on plenty of dates and just felt nothing but when I meet this girl it just felt different, I was a little apprahensive starting anything but because I liked her and we seemed to click I wanted to give it a go anyway. Having a neck surgery and trying to get to know someone wasn't really the best start for anyone I would later come to realise.

 

On July 18th I went in for surgery, I would be in ICU for two days before in a ward for 4 days, I started small amounts of rehab but was told not to overdo it. I had to be in a neck Brace for 7 weeks and couldn't drive for that time, To concentrate on a full recovery a couple of months before decided to move back in with my family, the appartment complex I was in wasn't the best place for recovery, For the next 6 weeks after surgery I didn't do anything but Rest, rehab and worked from home, I felt Lazy and my cardio fitness was lacking even more than it had from the previous 8 months before surgery, During the surgery and even when I was in hospital thing's with me and the girl I was seeing were great, we would text and message all the time, for the first time in a long time I was looking forward to getting a message off someone and couldn't wait to speak to them, but starting to date someone when I was in a Vunerable place was always going to be hard, she was yet to see what I was like before I had 

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