WSIB claim after the incident

Hey everyone,

I suffered an injury at work, and need some advice on how to approach WSIB. Here’s some backstory

I’ve had an unrelated recurring issue for 10+ years of occasional very short lived sciatic nerve pain. It’ll bug me for a couple seconds, tops an hour, and then it goes away.

Recently I switched to a different location of the company that I work for (Shoppers Drug Mart/Loblaws if relevant) and started doing much more heavy lifting etc. I was walking one day at work after a day of heavy lifting including cardboard bales and my back started bothering me. I ignored it because it was the same symptom as the other older issue. It didn’t go away I ended up going to the hospital a couple days later as it kept getting worse. I didn’t tell them it was a work injury, because I wasn’t sure that it was at that time. They gave me a referral for physiotherapy and a week off work and told me it’s a big bad muscular issue causing sciatica. I go to the physio, take the week off, then go back for two half days and it makes it SO much worse. I go back to the hospital and I, again, don’t tell them it’s workplace because I’m not sure it is, I haven’t put any more thought into it I’ve just tried to push through. The hospital tells me it’s probably a herniated disc, I’m scheduled for an MRI sometime in the next week or two, was given heavy duty painkillers, another week off of work, and on my report it’s noted as “right sided sciatica”. Worth noting I’ve never had a disc issue before, so this is completely unrelated to my other relatively non bothersome sciatic pain. I go to physiotherapy today, we’re talking about when I noticed symptoms, I said at work and mentioned that I’ve been there just a few months with much more lifting. The physiotherapist tells me to contact WSIB for a claim because it’s obviously workplace related.

I know I didn’t tell my employer it was work related, nor did I tell the hospital both times that I went. Am I screwed? Will my claim be rejected and will I piss off my employer if I apply?

Sorry if this is a little all over the place, the pain has my brain on another planet most of the time