Published: July 14, 2026
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
This was not how Tim Carmack envisioned retirement — relying on a cane to make it through the door of a doctor’s office.
It was summer 2025. Tim had spent months troubleshooting a mysterious lower-leg issue. Test after test came back inconclusive. Treatments provided little relief. To be honest, things only got worse as time went on.
So here he was, sitting in front of Kathryn J. McCarthy Mullooly, M.D., spine surgeon with Norton Leatherman Spine, looking for answers.
Lucky for him, Dr. McCarthy would not accept his newfound immobility.
“She saw the cane, and she’s like, ‘Oh no, no, you’re not doing that. We’re going to get this fixed,’” Tim said. “She was very determined to figure out what the problem was.”
That determination gave him hope that he would eventually get his life back.
Movement is part of Tim’s DNA.
Tim spent more than 40 years working in information technology. Because of the sedentary nature of the job, he scheduled time — every hour of every day — to walk around the office. Outside of work, he walked, ran, biked and hiked whenever he could.
Staying active wasn’t just a hobby. It was mandatory.
“I have to move,” Tim said. “I think I got it from my dad. He was a walker. And I don’t get walking on treadmills, because [I feel like] I’m just standing still. I would rather walk in a snowstorm or a rainstorm than walk on a treadmill. There’s something in me that wants to move. I want to get out and move around. It brings a calmness and some peace.”
So, you could imagine the feeling when Tim started to have right hip and leg pain late in 2024.
At the time, he was running 2 to 5 miles a day, five days a week. Combined with his daily walks, he regularly logged between 10,000 and 20,000 steps a day. The hip pain was constant, but manageable. The leg pain wasn’t.
“It would force me to cut my runs short,” Tim said. “Initially, I thought it was shin splints. I’ve had shin splints before, so I thought if I just slow down a little bit, it’ll go away.”
It didn’t, and what followed was nearly a year of appointments, tests and referrals in search of a diagnosis.
He started with an orthopedist, who identified osteoarthritis in his hip, a condition that would eventually require surgery but could be kept at bay in the short term with cortisone shots.
The leg pain remained a mystery.
He went back to the doctor — a second orthopedist — who ordered an MRI. It revealed nothing conclusive. Then, a vascular specialist ruled out a blood clot. Physical therapy offered the first clue.
“The therapist said, ‘Why don’t you go see someone about your back?’” Tim said. “And to me, that didn’t make sense, because I’m thinking that back pain would go down my entire leg, not just my lower leg. But she insisted, ‘Just go check with the back specialist.’ So, I did.”
By the time Tim met Dr. McCarthy, he was frustrated and discouraged.
He had undergone two MRIs, a CT scan and two X-rays, yet still had no clear diagnosis. Through it all, the pain was getting worse. He already cut running from his exercise regimen. Now, merely walking was getting difficult.
“There were times I would try to take a walk, and I might get three doors down in my neighborhood and have to turn around and come back,” Tim said. “I was only able to walk 250 yards at times. My wife and I would take trips to Nashville, [Tennessee] and I could walk like two storefronts and have to sit down.”
Dr. McCarthy began with conservative treatments, including medication and steroid injections, which seemed to stem the pain for only a day at most.
Then, she saw the cane.
“It was really disheartening,” Dr. McCarthy said. “But this is also the benefit of seeing people over time. I was able to see the symbols and the signs. So, I saw him walk in [my office] with a cane, and I said, ‘No, this is the line in the sand here, my friend.’”
Determined to find the source of the pain, she adjusted her approach.
Targeting injections to a different area of Tim’s spine, specifically the lumbar 4 and 5 (L4-L5) vertebrae, produced a breakthrough.
The response helped confirm the diagnosis. While Tim also had multilevel lumbar spondylosis, or arthritis in multiple levels of his lower back, the primary culprit was lateral recess stenosis, a narrowing around the nerve roots that was compressing nearby nerves. With the source identified, Dr. McCarthy recommended a less-invasive surgery, one that could get Tim moving quicker.
“She was confident she could figure out what it was,” Tim said. “One of her points was that, even though I’m older – I’m 64 now – I’m active. And she really wanted to get me back to being active again.”
In November 2025, Dr. McCarthy performed a successful laminotomy, or decompression, at Tim’s L4-L5 vertebrae. The minimally invasive procedure removes a small portion of the lamina — the bony roof of the spinal canal — to relieve pressure on the pinched nerves, while preserving the spine’s stability.
“We finally got it nailed down to what exactly was bothering him,” Dr. McCarthy said. “This is a case where it was like a puzzle. We were putting the pieces together, and Tim is the classic example of the old saying that the proof is in the pudding. He was so good about staying the course, being patient and working together with me to nail the symptomatic nerve root.”
The results were immediate.
“As soon as I recovered from surgery, I’d say the pain was down probably 75% immediately,” Tim said. “Over the next couple of weeks, the pain went away completely, and I could start walking again.”
But Tim had one last hurdle to clear – his hip was so arthritic, Dr. McCarthy knew it eventually would limit his recovery. She referred him to Kevin J. Himschoot, M.D., orthopedic surgeon with Norton Orthopedic Institute.
This diagnosis was much more straightforward. Tim needed a hip replacement.
Just six weeks after his back surgery, Tim underwent a successful right hip replacement.
“It all went according to plan” Tim said. “And how did I know? About three weeks after the hip surgery, I was shoveling snow. So, at that point, I was back to normal.”
After two surgeries in six weeks, Tim finally was ready to pound the pavement.
Though he retired from running, he resumed walking, hiking and traveling with enthusiasm.
He started with regular trips to The Parklands of Floyds Fork, hiking a few miles at a time. Then, Tim and his wife traveled to Arizona, where they completed a 5-mile hike. A few months later, he and a friend traveled to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and hiked more than 40 miles over three days.
He covered every mile pain-free.
Along the way, he snapped pictures and later shared them with Dr. McCarthy.
“That would’ve been absolutely impossible before,” he said. “There’s no way that trip would’ve worked without what Dr. McCarthy and Dr. Himschoot did for me.”
For Tim’s spine surgeon, those photos were especially meaningful.
“How lucky am I that somebody thinks that I’m a part of that,” she said. “Tim did all the work to get there. For me, it’s a feeling of gratitude to be, in any way, associated with something like that. I was just a little piece of it. But I loved getting those pictures of him and seeing him back to doing what he loves.”
Next on Tim’s agenda: a river cruise through Europe. He and his wife will begin in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and travel the Rhine River to Switzerland, exploring places they’ve never seen before.
This time, he’ll do it the way he always imagined — walking into retirement cane-free and pain-free.
“I think I was lucky,” he said. “It was kind of random that I ended up seeing Dr. McCarthy, but she was really good at listening and using my description of the problem to figure out where it was. She really stuck with it, and in the end, fixed me.”
Reviewed by Kathryn J. McCarthy Mullooly, M.D., and Kevin J. Himschoot, M.D.