07/04/2026
Today’s FB memory hit me a little differently.
Six years ago this weekend, on the 4th of July, I was camping at Anicinabe Park in Kenora with my family. I can still picture it so clearly.
I was sitting on a grassy hill with our dogs, watching my daughters swim in the lake. It was one of those absolutely beautiful, perfect summer days.
As I got up from sitting on the hill, my back felt a little “off”. The next morning, I woke up in complete agony.
Just sitting at the wrong angle for a couple of hours had triggered another devastating flare-up of my back pain. The electric shocks down my leg, the burning, the constant pain… it was so severe this time that I had to stop working for months.
That wasn’t unusual for me.
Ever since I herniated my first disc at 20 years old while training for the rowing team at Rutgers University, I had lived with the fear of the next flare-up. One herniated disc eventually became four. Every vacation, every workout, every long car ride, every awkward movement came with the same thought:
“Is this going to be the one that puts me out again?”
If you’ve lived with chronic back pain, you know exactly what I mean. I felt depressed and hopeless. This flare up was the most severe and I had nowhere to turn.
Later that fall, while attending an event in Calgary, I met Dr. Mark Jagger. He introduced me to something I had never seen before: robotic laser spinal decompression.
For the first time in over 20 years, I felt hope!
Six months later, I had my first robotic laser spinal decompression table installed in my own clinic… and I became my very first patient.
Today, six years later, I realized something that almost made me emotional. I haven’t had a single debilitating flare-up since.
Not one.
The greatest gift wasn’t just having less pain.
It was getting my freedom back.
Freedom to travel.
Freedom to exercise.
Freedom to be active.
Freedom to sit by the lake with my family without worrying about how I’d feel the next morning.
Freedom to stop living in fear.
That experience completely changed the direction of my career and my life. It’s why I’m so passionate about helping people who feel like they’ve “tried everything.”
Because I remember exactly what it feels like to wonder if this is just how life is going to be.
If you’re reading this and you’re living in that place right now, please don’t lose hope.
Sometimes the treatment that changes your life is simply one you haven’t discovered yet.
❤️
Here’s to six years of freedom… and to helping as many others as possible find theirs.
The 4th of July has a whole new meaning for me now.
Happy 4th of July to all of my American friends! 🇺🇸❤️
