I just realized that I never actually explained how we found out that I had scoliosis. I know Mom did, but you’ve never actually heard my version:
About mid-to-late July 2014, I had been playing outside with my neighbors, The D family. Mrs. D thought she saw me limping, so Mom asked me to walk in front of them. I felt self conscious, and began to walk straight and without a limp. But when I ran back to the girls and my brother, I didn’t notice I was limping.
When we were walking back to our garage, Mom walked behind me and noticed something off about my shoulders. She thought that I had broken something, particularly around my collarbone/shoulder/shoulder blade area. She spun me around, looking for a broken bone. The weird thing was, I had never complained of searing pain like when you break a bone. Finally, she lifted my shirt, and saw a hump in my lower back. “This must be scoliosis.” She muttered. “What’s that?” I asked. She looked seriously worried, and it was making me nervous. “I think you have scoliosis.” She said a bit louder. “Umm, but what does it do?!” I asked, and I was getting very nervous at that point. “It’s where your spine curves abnormally.”
I completely freaked out. Mom immediately Googled all about it. I started playing on my laptop, still worried. Mom called the doctor’s office, and got me an appointment (I needed my shots, even though I couldn’t get in until August 5th). August 5th came around, and the doctor’s appointment did too. Traffic was really bad that morning, so we didn’t arrive until almost the appointment time. We didn’t wait very long, despite our late arrival.
My doctor had me bend over, and confirmed that I had scoliosis. She had checked at the last appointment, but there was nothing. She told us we needed an X-Ray to see the level of what it was, and she set up and appointment for us with a spine doctor. I went to school normally later that day, not worrying about it and not having a care in the world, since I had calmed down.
Mom had to call a couple times to see if the results had come in, and finally she picked up the CD. August 11th rolled around. The next morning, I asked if they had found anything. They showed me what they had seen. Not knowing the extent of how awful it was, I went out to catch the bus and didn’t worry about it.
On the way to work, apparently, Dad had taken a picture of how awful my spine looked. I didn’t have an appointment for the spine doctor until October 9th, but Dad showed the front desk nurses, and they told him that I had a 1pm appointment THAT DAY. Meanwhile, at school, I was putting my clarinet up in the bin for storage, and Mr. F told me that I was to be in the front office at 11am for my parents to pick me up for a spine doctor appointment. I nodded and headed into my 2nd Period class.
11am came. I headed down to the front office, and Mom and Dad took me to eat lunch (since 11am is normally my lunchtime at school). Playing in the restaurant was “Titanium” by David Guetta featuring Sia. Now, I think back to that moment and think of how fitting it is that that song was basically telling me that I would soon be Titanium Girl.
When we got to the spine doc’s, we got in really quickly. He took a look at my back, and then at the X-Ray from 6 days before. He said, “There are three ways to treat scoliosis. We can wait and see,”
“That’s not a ‘wait and see’ curve, though, is it?” Mom replied.
“No. The second option is bracing.”
“We can’t brace that though.” Mom said
“No. The last option is surgery.”