Breaking the news

Tuesday, I went to the doctor. Wednesday, I e-mailed my family and close friends:

For those of you who do not know, I will be having surgery to correct my scoliosis either at the end of this year or beginning of next. I’m still working out time issues.

I have had increasing back pain in the last couple of years and increased problems with the way I look. I typically keep both these problems to myself, as I am for some reason embarrassed by it.

My back has continued to grow, and I found out yesterday at the doctor’s office that I am now almost two inches shorter than I was in high school. When I was growing up, my curve degree was in the 50 degree range, considered a gray area for surgery. Being young, in no pain, not being concerned with how I look and very concerned about surgery, we (mom, dad, doctors, me) decided to never go through the surgery.

Once I became old enough, I stopped going to specialists about my back. I always hated going as it was. But recently, it has become more and more apparent to me that I needed to go. Mom and I went to see a specialist yesterday.

I apparently am now out of the gray area and am in the 60-degree range. Because my degree has increased by so much in the years since my last appointment in high school, it is my doctor’s opinion that I have surgery to stop it from continuing to grow. I personally don’t want to be one of the hump-backed old ladies I see sometimes. Dr. Hostin said doing the surgery now would prevent complications that I may have if I waited til I was older to do the surgery, when I could be in more pain and not as healthy as I am right now in my life.

I know we all saw mom’s surgery and it was scary. Mine, I have been assured, will not be that bad (insert disclaimer here about the unforeseen). Dr. Hostin said we can just fix the top curve with a rod and leave the bottom curve alone. He believes the bottom curve is a compensation my body has made to manage the top curve and will go away on its own. He ordered more x-rays to confirm this. With just doing the top part, I will keep most of the range of motion and bending that I have now with my back, and the surgery won’t be as risky either.

I will move in with mom and dad at the end of the year, so they can help me out. I plan to move back to Dallas as soon as I can. It will be an easy move for me (sorry Barry!) since I won’t be able to lift anything!

I’ll have to take a month to six weeks off from work, which my boss was really understanding about and is helping me work out a plan to figure out the best way for me to do this. I’m not sure if I’ll have to wear a brace or not, but I can assure you that I will take it off no matter what the doctor says for Janet’s wedding! We’ll discuss that later!

If you have any questions about where I’m going, my doctors have a great and very informative Web site at www.consultingorthopedists.com. I recommend reading the FAQ. You can see Dr. Hostin’s page there, too. I think he’s great and warmed to him immediately when I met him. He spent as much time as I wanted with me and mom yesterday answering our questions and even showing me before and after x-rays of other patients that are similar to me and some that are much worse than me.

One final thing, I know this may seem silly to some of you, but I’m going to start a blog to talk about this and my experiences with it. There’s not a whole lot out there about people my age talking about this and this fulfills one of my life to-do list items (start a blog — check). I know I wish I could read more about what they’ve been through, but most of it is old people or kids. I could care less if anyone reads it. I’ll let you know later what the address is.

xoxo,

Megs