From pain to podium: one young golfer's story
How Medcan's team approach helped one competitive golfer get back in the game
For Hudson, 16, the summer was supposed to be about golf. A competitive athlete studying at the prestigious Leadbetter Golf Academy in Orlando, he returned home to Toronto in May following a training stint. But instead of preparing for competition, persistent back pain brought those plans to a halt.
"My back had been bothering me for three weeks to a month," he recalls. "At my level, if you're not close to 100 per cent, it's hard to compete. We didn't know what the summer was going to look like."
The situation was made more complex by the fact that Hudson lives with Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel condition that can sometimes contribute to musculoskeletal symptoms. At first, he and his parents wondered whether the pain might be related to inflammation in the sacroiliac (SI) joint – the joint that connects the sacrum, at the base of the spine, to the pelvis – which can be a source of pain for some people living with Crohn's disease.
As long-time Medcan Dedicated Care members, Hudson's parents brought him to his Dedicated Care physician, Dr. Taras Nahirny. What followed was a highly coordinated, multidisciplinary approach involving physician assessment, diagnostic testing, and bloodwork. The team at Medcan worked together to identify the root cause of Hudson's pain with the goal to get him back into performance mode.
Following numerous evaluations, Hudson's care team determined that the issue wasn't inflammatory after all – it was muscular. With the right diagnosis in place, Dr. Nahirny referred Hudson to Dr. Evelyn Lock, chiropractor at Medcan's Kingsway location, where the team mobilized quickly. "Everything happened fast," says Hudson. "It wasn't, 'We'll see you in two weeks.' It was, 'We'll see you tomorrow.' I got care right away."
Hudson and his parents also appreciated the convenience of having care so close to home. The Kingsway clinic is just a few minutes away. “It makes a difference for a young man who is travelling all the time," says Hudson's mother, Cynthia Thomas.
Care that went beyond physical recovery
Over the next three weeks, Hudson visited Medcan Kingsway regularly, sometimes for back-to-back one-hour chiropractic sessions. The relationship he built with his care team – particularly Dr. Lock – became a defining part of his experience.
Hudson arrived expecting chiropractic treatment. What he received, he says, was much more.
"Dr. Lock gave me movements and stretches, but she also worked on the mindset with me," he says. "She helped me understand that something could feel sore, but that didn't necessarily mean I couldn't perform."
As any golfer knows, mental resilience can be just as important as physical ability, and the strategies Hudson learned quickly became a key part of his recovery and performance. Dr. Lock introduced Hudson to breathing exercises to help calm both his nerves and muscle tension. She also taught focus techniques he could use before and during tournaments. "One exercise was about focusing so intently on a single point that everything else disappears," he explains. "When I used that on the golf course, instead of thinking about pain or worrying about my back, I could focus on the ball and the shot in front of me."
The result was greater confidence – not only in his body, but in his ability to manage challenges as they arose. "The stretches helped me physically, but the mindset work will help me with future injuries, too," he says. "Dr. Lock taught me to trust the process and what my body is capable of."
