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've got a new sort of back ache as well as the rib bump one just now, it's right below my shoulder blades in the middle, every time I wake up in the morning. Plus my neck hurts. And quite often I wake up with a numb arm. I wonder they're all scoli things? I have a habit of blaming everything on scoliosis though...think I will go to the GP and see if I can get something done. But what treatments are there for adults, that you don't have to pay for, other than pain killers? Will they think I'm malingering or trying to jump on some sort of bandwagon because of Laura's surgery? I once went to a chiropractor but it cost £££ and all I got was an X ray taken at a dodgy angle that made me look like I had a 90 degree curve and didn't even show me in sexy shoes like the one on the right. The treatment for it all consisted of trying to wrench my head off my body (which wasn't having any - loud popping and crunching noises told me that), while I sat with a silly g...

So far this year I have had many ups and downs and it is only May! I remember a time when I would go a few months before any major pain or discomfort inside. I noticed last week my shoulder muscles were very strained and became painful, I thought perhaps this was due to me using a walking stick which had put pressure on my upper back muscles. I am now a week later and no change except it is now a dull ache and I notice my rod a lot more than I ever did. I never had problems in the upper back before or surrounding the rod area. After close inspection on the scar my husband says it looks as if the skin has moved slightly as the scar used to be a straight line up the spine whereas the top of the scar is now bearing to the left slightly. For a few weeks now I have complained of heart palpitations (feels like a butterfly is flapping its wings over my heart) when I get into bed at night, my ribs have moved (we think) and my hips do not feel as aligned as they did a few months back and I have...