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Showing posts from June, 2010

Put a Price On Your Pain

If you could put a price tag on your pain, what would it be? How much would you say your experience has cost you since diagnosis to the present time? $500? $1000? Are goats and chickens involved? Could you buy a small country and overthrow its current benevolent dictator, bring peace, and then lose your sanity as the corruption swelled your head with the price tag you put on your pain? I could, but only when I'm feeling extraordinarily dramatic. Ignoring the emotional costs, both positives and negatives, physical and mental scars, all of it, and what is left? Let me tell you. At least $2000 bucks, baybee! Not to get overly excited seeing as how I'm about to talk about another government related experience, but I'm feeling pretty perky (possibly due to the fact that for once I'm not fighting the medical system.) You see, in the fall I'll be moving away from home and attending Lethbridge College, just north of the Montana boarder (so if any of you Stateside Scolioti

Treatment of Scoliosis in patients with Prader-Willi

ScoliosisJournal report: Treatment of scoliosis in patients affected with Prader-Willi syndrome using various different techniques Authors: Tiziana Greggi, Kostas Martikos, Francesco Lolli, Georgios Bakaloudis, Mario Di Silvestre, Alfredo Cioni, Giovanni Barbanti Brodano and Stefano Giacomini Background The incidence of spinal deformity in children with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is high, with 86% of these patients found to have a significant structural scoliosis; however, there are very few case reports describing surgical treatment for this deformity. Methods The authors reviewed a case series consisting of 6 patients who underwent spine surgery for scoliosis. Children's mean age at first surgery was 12 years and 10 months (range, 10 to 15 yrs). Clinical evaluation revealed the typical phenotype of the PWS in all of the patients; 4 subjects had a karyotype confirmation of PWS. Major structural curves showed preoperative mean Cobb angles of 80.8degrees (range,

Scoliosis Awareness Bracelet

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Majority of you are aware that I have been campaigning for awareness for some time where Scoliosis is concerned, you will also know that we got our heads together to create the Scoliosis Official UK awareness bracelet, this has been a long time in the making but now we are finally launched and ready to start sending them out. ScoliosisNutty in association with the SAUK bring to you the UK's official Scoliosis Awareness Wristband to help promote Scoliosis as a condition that many people suffer from (myself included) or have suffered from, the aim of the wristband is to raise money for on-going research for Scoliosis. ScoliosisNutty have donated half of their stock to the SAUK to enable them to raise money also. The SAUK carry out valuable work for the Scoliosis community so it pleasing to know we can support them. Should you wish to order your Scoliosis Wristband then please visit the ScoliosisNutty website and complete the order form Thanks for your continued support and lo

"Pain, meet Spine. You two are going to be good friends."

Well gang, it's been a while. Last we saw each other I was having a bit of a hysterical breakdown due to the rather unexpectedly massive wait list for the Calgary Pain Clinic. You'll be happy to hear I raised quite a fuss and am continuing to do so, however there were some interesting developments and one in particular that I have to share with you. Not an hour after sending my complaint letter to Alberta Health Services I received a phone call from some random person hired to intercept any and all lightly veiled threats and angry comments. It was fairly quickly that this woman had absolutely no intention of actually listening to a thing I had to say and when asked about just why the deuce anyone could possible think 18 months is an appropriate wait time, responded by saying "Well, there's a lot of people." No kidding, Sherlock; did you figure that one out yourself or did you need a graphing calculator to help? The only thing she could offer me was, once again