My back was not happy last week with the weights exercises, and it’s still not really happy, but I wrote most of this last week. The pain is worst at night. So, you get random facts/ memories about my back related to my scoliosis whether you want them or not. This blog is going to be equally personal and client work, so here goes:
1. The curve was 87 degrees when they operated in 1993. It got corrected to 15 degrees, but settled back around 45, precisely where it was when they found the curve when I was 6 years old.
2. I grew an inch and a half in that 10-hour surgery that saved my life when I was 13 years old. It was a 2-part surgery; I don’t even know what all they did except in the first part they cut open the entire length of my side and took out a rib and a little piece of my hip bone. Then they turned me over and cut open the entire length of my spine and Dr. Fackler said he stopped counting after he removed 8 discs, so I don’t actually know how many he took out. My curve is sort of like a corkscrew and was going to crush my heart without the surgery.
3. My spine is fused to and including my sacrum all the way to just be low my shoulder blades. I bend from the the leg joint just below my hips, not at my waist.
4. Despite not being able to touch my toes, that isn’t actually a byproduct of the surgery. I couldn’t touch my toes before the surgery, and I have precisely the same flexibility as before in that regard. Dr. Fackler said I would and he was right.
5. I wore a ginormous plastic back brace from the ages of 6 until the surgery at age 13. I tried to look for the first one to take a picture because I do still have that one, but I am feeling lazy this morning. There were at least 5 of them as I grew, I know. I only have the first one from when I was 6 now. It was tiny; I was tiny. Instead, I found the x-ray they gave me years and years ago, the x-ray is marked 3/3 but I don’t know if that is 3/3 of 1992 or 1993. I do know it was progressing fast right before the surgery and I know it was 87 degrees at the last x-ray the week before the surgery.
6. To make those braces, they made a cast of my whole core, from just under my arms all the way down. All I remember about it was that it was unbearably hot once it was almost done curing, before they cut it off, and those strips of plaster were wet and really gross going on. I still remember George at CH Martin & Co on Marietta Street a block away from where the Aquarium is now, and Debbie, their receptionist. George made most of the casts all those years I think. I remember being really super scared of the saw when I was super little.
7. I had two sets of school books my 8th grade year and didn’t have to carry a backpack or do PE. About a week before the full year anniversary of the surgery was up (and I was to be cleared for whatever activity I wanted), the very first physically strenuous thing I tried doing was water skiing with Brandi at Lake Wedowee. I wasn’t very good at it, though, and only tried it the one time.
8. One of the “twist ties” as I call them that hold the rods
together busted within a year of the surgery leaving one of the rods poking out of my back. I had to live with it for about a year and it was extremely painful depending on which way I moved. I requested the piece of the rod Dr. Fackler cut off in December of 1994, which is why I have a part of the rods now.
9. I only missed one day of school for that follow up surgery to remove the busted twist tie and cut the rod shorter that December. It was the day before Christmas break and I didn’t want to miss the fun with my friends even though I’d finished my work early. I remember standing in the bandroom and Mr. Elrod seeing me and asking if the surgery got cancelled. I just held up that little bit of rod and smiled and he shook his head.
10. I got lots of cards and kept them all for years after the surgery. Tommie Freeman sent the very first one; it was waiting for me in ICU at Piedmont when I got out of surgery.
11. The whole reason I started loosening those braces when I was still wearing them all those years was because somebody at school told me to or dared me to, one. I got in a lot of trouble over the years for that, though thankfully I know now that wouldn’t have prevented the surgery regardless. And kids with my severity of scoliosis especially rarely wear my kind of brace anymore anyway.
12. When I went for the last visit with Dr. Fackler before he retired, he said “We don’t do surgeries like yours anymore.” To which I was like, “Great, I’m already an ancient artifact.” But, when I went back after Jared and I were married and after Dr. Fackler had retired, the orthopedic surgeon I saw at Peachtree Orthopedic Clinic was the one who told me that surgery had saved my life, that it would have been the only option available to do so, and that I was one of Dr. Fackler’s miracle cases. I got paraded around to the other doctors on the floor that day for that very purpose. He told me to go home and thank my parents for saving my life, which I promptly did. He told me Dr. Fackler was the only doctor in the entire Southeast who could have done that surgery. But, I’m glad people don’t really have go to through that anymore because it wasn’t fun.
13. The worst pain I have ever felt in my life wasn’t giving birth with nothing for pain but Tylenol, which I have done twice and it wasn’t a c-section either. It was having the chest tube removed after that back surgery.
14. Because of the fusion from the surgery, an epidural was not an option for childbirth. Which is why I opted for nothing— I’m not sure the Tylenol counts because I had it so late with Porter and I’m not sure I had it at all with Liam. And because of not being able to have an epidural, when Oliver’s heart rate plummeted after they induced him, it was off for an emergency c-section under general anesthesia. At the follow up with Oliver the doctor was surprised I’d had two babies the natural way— the only way it probably happened was they were both preemies— Oliver was our only full-term baby.
15. Just like I know what it is to have people reject me socially for mental health reasons, I know what it is to be the weird little girl with a back brace that a lot of kids don’t want to play with.
16. A few days after I got home from the hospital after the surgery, I thought to feel my back with my hands. I was astounded to find out that the ginormous hump I’d previously had on the left side of my lumbar spine was completely gone. The fact that it is gone is still weird to me 31 years later.
17. When I was super little in first grade when I first got the brace, it was fun to let the boys in my class take turns trying to punch me in the stomach. It only hurt their hands, not me.
18. I still remember having to buy clothes that were too big for me, to fit with the brace. I remember being very glad to be going into high school not having to wear clothes that were too big.
19. There will be no revision surgery; I was told in 2022 when I visited an orthopedic surgeon with hip pain that those don’t turn out well at all. Basically, I was told I just can’t ever get into a car accident or have any other sort of traumatic injury. It would go badly.
20. All I cared about during the surgery was two things: I was very concerned about how Dr. Fackler was going to eat lunch if he had to do a 10 hour surgery, and I wanted to see Picket Fences the Thursday night after the Wednesday surgery. It turned out Dr. Fackler had a sandwich right in the operating room, and the nice nurse in ICU did turn on Picket Fences but I wasn’t with it enough to ask for my glasses and I am blind as a bat without them, so I couldn’t follow any of it.
21. The bottom half of the brace always had to be tighter than the top. And it couldn’t be up too high. Both things would put me in a bad mood all day long. Or I would take it off entirely, which was actually very difficult for me to do on my own. I certainly couldn’t tighten it by myself.
22. The rods line both sides of my spine from right at my shoulder blades all the way to being held together by these little twist tie looking things, held together by a little plate at the base of my spine, splitting and are drilled most of the way through into both hips.
23. When we were still taking Liam to CHOA neurosurgery for his Chiari, the doctor who had followed Liam since he was 2 said he remembered Dr. Fackler well. He said he didn’t know how many scoliosis surgeries he did at CHOA, but it was a lot. Mine just happened to be at Piedmont.
24. It is only comfortable for me to lay on my left side, because as the curve has progressed up into my rib area, the curve moves to the right. Fighting the direction of the curve is the only thing that is comfortable.
25. I only know my upper back doesn’t look like it used to because I caught a glimpse of a chest x-ray at urgent care when I was sick about a year and a half ago. But whatever the full length looks like must be fairly unusual/impressive because the orthopedist I saw about my hip in 2022 ordered a full x-ray panel and I put it off till mid-2023 when I finally thought to do it…. The radiologist or some random medical person came out of the office and gawked at me a minute after I left the dressing room. My only guess is it’s not quite something they see every day. I still haven’t scheduled the follow up with orthopedics, so I don’t know.
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