the long and winding road

First, for anyone who may be reading this and just learning for the first time about my jacked up spine, a little history:

In sixth grade I had my first scoliosis screening at Eisenhower Elementary School in Leavenworth, Kansas. The main thing I remember about this is how they separated the girls from the boys and how we all uncomfortably giggled about having to take our shirts off for the nurse. We were also supposed to be using the waiting time to work on memorizing the beginning of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. I totally aced the speech memorization--that's an indication of how concerned I was about the possibility of scoliosis. It was a meaningless word to me at that point. I went in to the nurse, bent over, she glanced at my back and put some kind of level on it, declared me to be fine, signed my paper, and sent me back to class. Scoliosis was out of my mind.

Then in seventh grade my family moved to North Carolina. I remember complaining more and more about how my back hurt pretty regularly, and always feeling like I wasn't really taken seriously. After all, how could a little girl who was perfectly healthy and who'd never done any real work in her life have back problems? Please. Fortunately, in North Carolina, they do the scoliosis screenings in seventh grade instead of sixth. So one afternoon we lined up and waited for the nurse and bent over. This time it wasn't so quick. "Hmm." "Could you touch your toes again?" "Hmm." I don't remember what happened between then and my first doctor's appointment, but it happened pretty quickly thereafter.

They first tried to help it by having me wear a lift in my left shoe. The theory was that my off-kilter spine was caused by my left leg being slightly shorter than my right, thus putting my hips out of alignment, causing my back to try to compensate by curving.

This attempt pretty much cracks me up now. This centimeter-thick piece of styrofoam will do the trick! Right.

After a year or so of the shoe lift not doing any good and my curve continuing to progress, they decided to put me in a brace. At least, I think that's what the doctors told me; all I heard was "we've decided to take away your social life and self-esteem." Awesome. The day I went in to have it molded they had to mark some measurements on me, and I was so furious with them for putting red writing all over my new swimsuit with the fish on it. Man, that was a cute swimsuit. Was. Needless to say I was not taking the whole brace thing very well. It was uncomfortable, made me feel ugly, and ruined my favorite swimsuit. Pretty much the trifecta of adolescent suffering.

There was one stroke of luck though--remember the early 90s? Remember how wearing huge oversized t-shirts was totally fashionable? Good thing. I could wear my brace to school under my XXL Marvin the Martian t-shirt and not be too extremely conspicuous. I also quickly learned that the more okay and confident I felt in my brace, the more normal it was to my friends and peers. It was fun to be the tough girl who'd have all the boys in Mr. Eldridge's North Carolina History class try to punch her and only get their hands hurt. I liked tapping out beats on my plastic abs on the way to soccer practice with my friends. It wasn't really so bad.

Unfortunately, it also wasn't really so helpful.

Flash forward a couple years. I'm sixteen, no longer growing, and thus no longer required to wear my brace. My curve has progressed some over the past few years, but seems to have stabilized. I'm at about 55° on top, 43° on bottom. Oh yeah, I guess I should mention, I have an S curve. Some scoliosis just curves one way or the other, but mine has two curves in opposite directions. Like... an S. I'm at the point now where I'm not growing, apparently my spine isn't getting any worse, I'm not quite bad enough to need surgery, and I seem to be totally functional and healthy with the exception of regular back pain. But, you know, that's normal right? For me both then and now it just seems like part of living is that backs hurt. Please don't rub it in my face that the same may not be true for everyone =) It's easier thinking that it's normal.

So, what was I saying? Not growing. Not worsening. Basically fine. Awesome. I was left with instructions to get it checked every couple of years to make sure it was staying the same, and as long as it did, I'd be fine. No worries about health problems or long-term effects. I was completely happy with this conclusion.

As agreed, I got my back x-rayed every few years. No change at 17. No change at 18. No change at 20. I figured I was done.

Then a few weeks ago my mom convinced me I needed to get an x-ray again. It had been three years since my last x-ray and it's always good to just know for sure that I'm still okay. It would be a good time to take advantage of the insurance I have and just get it checked. So I set up the appointment, got the x-ray, looked at it and tried to determine whether it was different or not from my last one, gave up trying, and decided to just wait and see what the doctor said. On June 13th I had my first appointment with Dr. Bacon, who took one look at my back and said "why didn't they fix this five or six years ago?" Uh-oh. I didn't like where that was heading.

It turns out that in the past few years my curves have progressed (but not the right curves). The top one is now about 65° and the bottom one about 55°. That's it. Surgery. There's not really a question anymore. So on August 6th, 2007, I will be straightened. There is a whole lot that I think and feel and wonder and worry about this, but I will have to write about those things later. It's already been way too long of an entry just telling the story up to this point. Stay tuned for further updates on the saga of my crooked back. Also, I hope you enjoyed the double meaning of the title of this post, because personally I think it was a pretty awesome choice =) Ta.