Scoliosis: Life, Support & Friends

Life never fails to be interesting for me on the medical front. Wednesday I met my mom in Calgary; my first cortisone injection was bright and early Thursday morning. So we get to the Holy Cross and find the Advanced Spinal Care Centre, which, incidentally, is in the basement and as such I'm fairly certain qualifies as at least one of the many circles of hell. I'm trying to stay up beat and overly Mary Poppinsish in my outlook, so I bound up to the desk and proudly proclaim "I have an appointment at 9:30! Last name Sawisky, first name Kathleen!" (Unfortunately the five piece band I had hired to announce my arrival turned out to be double booked.) That was when it all went to hell in a hand basket. The receptionist looks at me, to the desk, to the tower of file folders beside her, flips one open and then turns back to me to say "We've been trying to contact you for three days." Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no no no. "We don't have your requisition for...

"...To talk of many things! Of meds and splints and spinal facts! Of surgeries and dreams! And how much a curvy spine can suck and how we deal with things! " It was an interesting sort of holiday season. The sort of interesting that ends with a person spending two and a half days at a bus depot, sleeping on the floor, making friends with random strangers, and doing your gosh-darned best not to lose your mind. Lambchops tiddliwinks. I mean-! I spent the solid portion of the last week trying to get back into the school mood. New classes, more work than last semester, I need to get a part time job, I'm still trying to get my writing to professional standards and, oh! What's this? An appointment with the Advanced Spinal Care Center in Calgary for cortisone injections? This week? What?! Yes, apparently time itself decided to speed up because I had no idea it would be so soon (and consequently told my teachers that, and I quote "will be going away sometime in the ne...

Hey everyone! Hi to everyone, especially Simone! Oh my holy ghost. I totally forgot about this blog for about a year, I hope I'm still welcome! Truth is... I lost my password. But now I'm back :) Just tell me to get lost if you like hahaha, I totally ditched the scoliosis community for a long time! Well just to let you know, my spine is now at 16 degrees both curves (i think) and has been for the past year or so. I am still undergoing bracing -.- which is so very very annoying and really hard on hot scorching days like this! But I will probably be done with bracing and with worrying about scoliosis for life by February! Which will be really exciting for me, for my 16th birthday I will be brace free! I haven't been brace free since the 7th of March 2008. Anyway I'm sorry I was momentarily lost in cyberspace, I promise I will still keep in touch after I'm done with my brace and answer first-timer brace-wearers' questions. I have about 3 years experience with braci...

... And a Merry-Countdown-to-the-New-Cycle-of-Days-Weeks-and-Months! Some of you may be looking at the time stamp and be asking yourselves, Just what sort of ten flavors of pathetic is Kathleen to be writing a blog on Christmas Day... at 1:00 pm? Well, I would list out said ten flavors of pathetic but really, that would just be another few minutes of me on the internet instead of gorging myself with the various delectable goodies that my Grandma is currently setting out for the family to enjoy. And as a grandma, she knows what sort of goodies are required for any and all occasions (Weddings? Petit-fours! Funerals? Casseroles with potato chip crusts! Just kidding, as Canadians we do not approve of potato chips on our casseroles.) The long and short of it my fellow Scoliotics, is that it is the holiday season, and as such we are often told to take a moment and consider the grandeur that we all have, and how lucky we are to be spending the holiday's with the ones we love (or, in som...

Math is simple. I was never any good at it, but as I've gotten older I've been able to carefully pull apart several complicated math problems that have eluded mathematicians for years. And here they are: Arthritis/General back pain + winter/snow/ice/cold wind/etc = Pain. I know, I know, it's revolutionary. Don't worry, I've already contacted the media, the Nobel Prize Committee has been alerted to this development. Now we can all just sit back and relax and wait for the world to catch up. Oh wait... Everyone has a variety of ways to deal with their pain. I've talked about some of them before, including but not limited to: Drugs, drugs, hot water bottles, drugs, crying in the fetal position, crying laid out flat on ones bed, and crying while a bottle of drugs tucked inside your fetal positioned body, catching your tears which can later be warmed and put in the hot water bottle. But sometimes, probably more often than any of us would like to admit, drugs and tears...

Yesterday we Steven and I decided to organise a Scoliosis meet up event in London so we can all get together, have a chat or a rant, share experiences and generally just chat to another person with Scoliosis and put faces and cuddles to names, considering we have all been networking together for some time on the internet we felt it was time to see and touch each other in the flesh. We would like to invite anyone with Scoliosis inside or outside the UK to join us, we have yet to confirm the venue but as London is within reach of most people we have chosen that as our destination, we are looking for somewhere we can sit down as a group eat, drink and be merry together :) If you have any suggestions on a venue then please be sure to comment here and tell me why the venue would be a good choice so we can have a look and perhaps send a Londoner on a scout for us hehehehe! Look forward to meeting fellow Scoliotics in February and here is hoping we can build our meetings to great level...

Sorry for not blogging for such a long time but I notice Kathleen has been keeping you busy - good girl! We went for a short holiday in Cyprus which was also for a wedding and then we joined our good friends for a week's cruise which had been booked for some time, since coming back from those holidays I have been trying to keep my workload to a minimum and doing what I can to help those in the scoliosis community, plus we now have the batch of wristbands which have started circulating so thanks for those orders ladies and gents and once again thanks for the support for our campaign on scoliosis awareness! I started on Lyrica 12th July, 2010 because I couldn't cope with the pain anymore, I was spending more and more time in bed again and having a few teary days so I crossed the bridge for nerve pain relief, well after 2 months of taking this expensive drug I decided I needed to stop so on the 21st September, 2010, I quit the Lyrica, I didn't slow down my dosage I just s...