To anyone walking down the street, Danielle looked the picture of style and health. But then she started to feel a niggling pain in her back and the mum-of-three’s nightmare ordeal began

Mum-of-three Danielle Demourtzidis has told how nagging back pain at the age of 37 ended with an excruciating nine-month spell in hospital.

Danielle’s spine broke when she was 14 after a tumor shattered part of her vertebrae. Surgeons decided the benign growth was too risky to remove without causing further damage.

Instead, a metal rod was inserted into her back to ‘stabilize’ her spine and Danielle moved on with her life.

That was until she developed back pain years later.

Daniellenow 40, told FEMAIL the rod had to be replaced because it had bent out of shape in her back after 23 years, but what followed was a nightmare she never saw coming.

“Nobody knew how to approach this, it’s such a strange case and they had never seen anything like it before,” she said.

When Danielle was a teenager, scans revealed the large tumor and a biopsy determined it was made up of blood vessels through her spine and ribs, so it was deemed too risky to operate on.

Danielle had no problems with her spine for years after the metal rod was inserted and she had three children.

But in 2022, her back started hurting.

‘I went to the doctor who did a few scans and the metal capsule was bent. So another surgeon recommended replacing the rods because it had been 20 years,” Danielle said.

It took two operations to remove the old rod and insert the new one.

‘I had the first operation and everything went well. I saw my husband and recorded a video message for my children. Then I couldn’t breathe,” she said.

Little did she know that her body was “shutting down” due to internal bleeding and that she was in a coma for five weeks due to an unexpected complication of the tumor.

Danielle’s husband George stayed by her side every day and was able to take time off work while her family cared for the children at home.

“When I woke up, almost every ability had been taken away – I couldn’t eat, speak, breathe, walk or move without assistance,” Danielle recalls.

‘I was stripped of everything except my sight and hearing… and I thought I woke up from the first operation. It was a complete shock when the doctors said I had been in a coma for five weeks. I did not understand.’

When Danielle woke up, she said the “fight of her life” had begun and the “easy part” was over.

The metal rod had to be re-inserted into Danielle’s back, but because she was so weak, the surgeons did not want to operate.

She remained in intensive care for no less than six months, where she experienced some of her most difficult moments. She underwent ten operations, a back wound that kept opening up, blood poisoning, persistent infections, persistent pain and she rarely saw her children.

“My spine was crushed so much that my head fell forward,” she recalled, describing spinal kyphoscoliosis.

‘I don’t know how I got here today. The doctors told my husband to say goodbye because they didn’t think I would make it.

‘It was absolute torture to be away from my children. It was the hardest thing in the world.”

Because her spine was not strong enough to support her head, a head brace was used.

As time passed, Danielle and everyone around her turned to faith and prayed every day to get better.

“There were so many times when I was exhausted and could barely move, but the nurses took such good care of me, and so did the community,” she said.

“I am forever grateful for what everyone has done for me. Some people I hadn’t heard from in 20 years reached out to see how I was doing.”

Against all odds, after six months she was finally strong enough for surgeons to re-insert the new rod into her back – and they were successful.

But the fight wasn’t over yet as Danielle had to stay in hospital for another three months to regain her mobility.

She received physiotherapy every day and had to learn to talk, walk and eat again.

To this day, the tumor is still in her back.

“I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m enjoying life with my family,” she said.

‘While I was in hospital my children wrote the countries they wanted to go to on a whiteboard and last June we were lucky enough to go on a family holiday to Paris, England and Greece.

‘Faith, family and friends have helped me through the most difficult time of my life.’