Scoliosis: Life, Support & Friends

Dammit, I promised myself I wouldn't cry. Mom and I drove to Tulsa and flew to St. Louis. Completely uneventful. Up early the next morning, called the shuttle to the hospital so we wouldn't have to worry about parking and grabbed breakfast in the cafeteria. Let me tell you something. Barnes Jewish is the biggest hospital I've ever seen. No joke, the building I was in is 20 stories high and all of the buildings cover SEVEN CITY BLOCKS. This place was GINORMOUS. I got two new x-rays taken. Oh, I forgot to mention, I was in excruciating pain THE ENTIRE TRIP. So I couldn't stand up straight (especially without my shoes) during the x-rays. I didn't bother to tell the radiologists or Dr. STL, I don't really know why. I was amazed to see the x-ray up on the lightboard. My bones are so off center when I am in pain. It was a good thing I stood like that, though. None of my previous x-rays had shown that my L4 vertebra is a good 1-1.5 cm to the left of my L3 ...

I wish there was one from the left side, then you'd see the comparison between the my back ribs on the left and the right. Oh, well. Heh. My CT scan was pretty much the same; I couldn't get it to rotate like Dr. OKC did. Picture 1 Picture 2 I haven't gone through the whole story yet. Here's the short version. My curve was found during a routine exam at school in 7th grade. I was 12, my curve was 18 degrees. Eight months later, it was 36. I had several braces, I think they were the Boston type. I chose to have surgery in July 1996 (I was 16); my curve was 48 degrees, and they fused me from T10-L3. I was in a cast for nine weeks and another brace for about six months. My curve was 20 the day after surgery. I only discovered that from my medical records. As far as I knew, it was 34. No, it increased to 34 post surgery. Before last summer, my most recent x-rays were January 1998. Last summer it was 37, but Dr. Q said to ignore that, the first radiologist mus...

I had a lady call me this morning who is in Hull, UK. She has an 8 year old daughter who has lumbar scoliosis, however, her GP will not refer her to a specialist as the GP does not agree that her daughter can be in pain, nor will she prescribe pain killers. The woman who called me was clearly distraught and in her words said “I am ready to kill someone”. Her daughter is having hydrotherapy but this is not working and renders the little girl in pain for the rest of the day – this is like a broken record for UK GPs, they don’t listen and think they know best – they are NOT always right and it disgusts me that a GP can let a child of that age suffer. If there is a member here from up North, please get in touch if you can recommend a Scoliosis specialist in your area – the lady is prepared to travel so if she cannot go closer to home she will go down south and see someone there. Thanks for any help that can be offered :)

Authors: Hitesh N Modi, Seung Woo Suh, Hae-Ryong Song, Jae-Hyuk Yang, Hak-Jun Kim and Chetna H Modi Differential wedging of vertebral body and intervertebral disc in thoracic and lumbar spine in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis- A cross sectional study in 150 patients. Background Hueter-Volkmann's law regarding growth modulation suggests that increased pressure on the end plate of bone retards the growth (Hueter) and conversely, reduced pressure accelerates the growth (Volkmann). Literature described the same principle in Rat-tail model. Human spine and its deformity i.e. scoliosis has also same kind of pattern during the growth period which causes wedging in disc or vertebral body. Methods This cross sectional study in 150 patients of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis was done to evaluate vertebral body and disc wedging in scoliosis and to compare the extent of differential wedging of body and disc, in thoracic and lumbar area. We measured wedging of vertebral bodies and discs, alon...