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Hello everyone! My name is Rachel, and I am in the seventh grade at the age of twelve years. Um....I've only had one official visit to the specialist so far so I don't know all of the fancy terms for everything yet. However, I'll try my best to explain the curves.
My spine is normal up to the end of my throat, where it goes into a 52 degree curve to the left. Further down my spine, in the lower back area, I have a curve of 62 degrees. At least now I know why my left shoulder blade sticks out a bit!
At first I was scared and even cried; my first diagnosis was at school, where I denied even having the possibility of having it and made the excuse of a leg being shorter than the other. At school we all teased each other; scoliosis at my school became as common an insult as meat-head in kindergarten. Naturally my first response upon my doctor telling me of a single 32 degree curve and a brace needed made me stumble, but I learned to accept it and was thankful I didn't need surgery. Boy, was that a mistake.
I was sent to a specialist so he could tell me all about my new brace, but somehow the x-ray was lost in the transfer. A new one was taken, and my doctor made a huge mistake. The curve he saw was double the size he had thought and there was a second one. This is the part where I cried like mad, but eventually I got over it and made the safe statement of my delight that I was not in danger of death. However, should I let my curves go on without treatment, I could be in danger of death. The upper curve would crush my heart and the lower, my lungs. Obviously I will need surgery.
This is where I haven't the foggiest notion as to where I'm headed. If you read anything you know to be wrong please post and tell me, this is why I joined up here! The surgery will be some time in June so that I can finish up the school year. The MRI will be some time in March because it doesn't affect anything. All I know about the surgery is that they'll cut open my back at some point, and at some point before they'll sedate me. The reason for my back being opened is for the insertion of stuff to straighten my spine out a bit. My spine will never be perfectly straight, or so says my specialist. After the surgery, which takes all day, I will be in the hospital for an estimated three days counting the surgery. On the second day they will have me sitting up, and walking around on the third. The only way this will affect my life at all is that I can't play any contact sports for 365 days after my surgery.
Okay enough depressing junk! I'm ready to gush about the good things. Let's start with the whole not-gonna-die part. That's pretty dang cool in my opinion. Also, since I have two severe curves, I figure I'll get a bit taller. That's great seeing as my pathetic 4"11 and 3/4 could certainly improve. My shortest friend is 5"1 and growing fast. What else...after this I can quickly end any discussion involving who suffered most. "I broke my finger." "I broke my arm." "I had surgery involving rods being placed in my back!" "........"
Yeah, so...that's about it. Any advice/tip/comment is more than welcome. Despite overcoming total panic I doubt my nerves are going to go away. Other stuff, um, I'm in Southern California and getting my surgery done at a Kaiser hospital. I don't think I should say which one, although I doubt any of you lovely people would use personal information about me at all. Questions I will answer to the best of my ability. To cover a few bases here I enjoy writing, reading, singing, and anything involving Pokemon or the Warriors saga by Erin Hunter. I am in all honors classes and a B in P.E. is all that keeps me from my coveted straight As. I've just been informed you can write extra credit papers for P.E. so that will be changing shortly. Yeah...so again, hi! Sorry if this post is too long.
My spine is normal up to the end of my throat, where it goes into a 52 degree curve to the left. Further down my spine, in the lower back area, I have a curve of 62 degrees. At least now I know why my left shoulder blade sticks out a bit!
At first I was scared and even cried; my first diagnosis was at school, where I denied even having the possibility of having it and made the excuse of a leg being shorter than the other. At school we all teased each other; scoliosis at my school became as common an insult as meat-head in kindergarten. Naturally my first response upon my doctor telling me of a single 32 degree curve and a brace needed made me stumble, but I learned to accept it and was thankful I didn't need surgery. Boy, was that a mistake.
I was sent to a specialist so he could tell me all about my new brace, but somehow the x-ray was lost in the transfer. A new one was taken, and my doctor made a huge mistake. The curve he saw was double the size he had thought and there was a second one. This is the part where I cried like mad, but eventually I got over it and made the safe statement of my delight that I was not in danger of death. However, should I let my curves go on without treatment, I could be in danger of death. The upper curve would crush my heart and the lower, my lungs. Obviously I will need surgery.
This is where I haven't the foggiest notion as to where I'm headed. If you read anything you know to be wrong please post and tell me, this is why I joined up here! The surgery will be some time in June so that I can finish up the school year. The MRI will be some time in March because it doesn't affect anything. All I know about the surgery is that they'll cut open my back at some point, and at some point before they'll sedate me. The reason for my back being opened is for the insertion of stuff to straighten my spine out a bit. My spine will never be perfectly straight, or so says my specialist. After the surgery, which takes all day, I will be in the hospital for an estimated three days counting the surgery. On the second day they will have me sitting up, and walking around on the third. The only way this will affect my life at all is that I can't play any contact sports for 365 days after my surgery.
Okay enough depressing junk! I'm ready to gush about the good things. Let's start with the whole not-gonna-die part. That's pretty dang cool in my opinion. Also, since I have two severe curves, I figure I'll get a bit taller. That's great seeing as my pathetic 4"11 and 3/4 could certainly improve. My shortest friend is 5"1 and growing fast. What else...after this I can quickly end any discussion involving who suffered most. "I broke my finger." "I broke my arm." "I had surgery involving rods being placed in my back!" "........"
Yeah, so...that's about it. Any advice/tip/comment is more than welcome. Despite overcoming total panic I doubt my nerves are going to go away. Other stuff, um, I'm in Southern California and getting my surgery done at a Kaiser hospital. I don't think I should say which one, although I doubt any of you lovely people would use personal information about me at all. Questions I will answer to the best of my ability. To cover a few bases here I enjoy writing, reading, singing, and anything involving Pokemon or the Warriors saga by Erin Hunter. I am in all honors classes and a B in P.E. is all that keeps me from my coveted straight As. I've just been informed you can write extra credit papers for P.E. so that will be changing shortly. Yeah...so again, hi! Sorry if this post is too long.
That's bbaadd because I'll probably be told to do yoga or something, and I can't even put one arm over my shoulder and have it meet the other behind my back, let alone fancy stretches and turning myself into a knotted mess of limbs. Unless my inflexibility is because of scoliosis? Now I'm really confused.
. So, I don't really know how my life would be right now if I played sports. Ok, here's my surgery experience: I have a wonderful doctor/surgeon. He's done this surgery so many times that he is really laid back about it. He told me I would be in the hospital 5-7 days and that most kids are back in school after 2 weeks. Well, that was not exactly my experience. I had the surgery on a Tuesday morning (took about 4 hours). By Thursday I was sitting up (but hating it!). I was also throwing up. I had really not wanted to throw up because I thought it would hurt a lot, but it wasn't that bad. I guess I was on enough drugs that I didn't really care. 
Well, I didn't stop throwing up so they kept me until Monday and then let me go because they thought being at home I would be able to recover better. Wrong! I ended up having to go back to the hospital on Wednesday because I was getting dehydrated since I could not keep anything down. So, they took some kind of x-ray and stuck an IV in me. They also put me on some different medicine. I was able to go home for good Friday. I started recovering nicely. 
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