Step two

A sad sign

I went to my doctor's appointment at Baylor Scoliosis Center almost one month ago. I decided I needed support, so my mom took off work to come with me. My mom rocks, too, by the way.

On our way from the parking lot to the doctor's office, I saw one reason to keep going with this...a little old woman was walking toward the medical center. My mom and I were upright, and she was at almost a 90-degree angle, bent over so far that her face naturally looked to her feet. This is a form of scoliosis. I have no idea how this woman slept at night. It was so sad. I just felt awful for her. How did she and her family let her get to this point? How much pain must she be in in every waking moment? It was so sad. My heart goes out to her.

That is why I am doing this. I will not be that little old lady, if I can help it.

The appointment

The office was nice. Decorated comfortably and plush. Good magazines and even books. Mom and I perused a Frank Lloyd Wright book while we waited. We weren't there for too long before I was signing paper work to participate in a study. It's anonymous, so I was cool with it. Let's be honest, I'm not too shy so I would have been fine with it probably either way.

The appointment was typical with x-rays and walking on tip-toes and bending and such. The staff was so nice. So nice. The x-ray tech had me laughing the whole time and the surgeon, Dr. Hostin, I met with was so helpful. I immediately felt confident in him. I think that's a good sign. Sometimes you just know if something is wrong or right. This definitely wasn't wrong.

He looked at my x-rays and spoke with the first doctor who gave me my walking and other tests. We talked about my past experiences with doctors for my scoliosis. He told me about his experiences and his practice's values.

We talked about how my curve growing up was always in the gray area where we opted not to have surgery. He said that when looking at scoliosis in kids, it's kind of like looking in a crystal ball. You're trying to figure out how this child will grow into an adult with scoliosis--will his or her curve get worse or stay the same? With me, my doctors were optimistic, and we opted against surgery.

Dr. Hostin said that now I am out of the gray area. I should have surgery.

I was convinced of this, too, when he told me how tall I am now. I am 5 feet, 5 inches tall. I was almost 5'7" when I graduated high school. Holy crap!

This shocked me more than anything else I heard. I'm shrinking! My spine is curving so much, I'm getting all scrunched up. This is why my bra has gone to a 38", I'm guessing. My back is going from long to wide. This sold me. I can only see this getting worse if untreated.

The doctor said I don't really have to have the surgery right away, as my pain is manageable and I don't look too horrible right now. The sooner, the better, though, because the older I get, the worse my symptoms will get and the harder the surgery and recovery will be on me.

Surgery (more specifics on this to come later) consists of opening up my back and fusing a metal rod to my spine. I wonder if I'll set the metal detectors off now at the airport.....off the subject.

Anyway, as I said in my e-mail post below, I have two curves in the 60 degree range. The top curve is the real curve, and the bottom curve (this is kind of cool) was just made by my body to compensate for the curving top half of my spine. As with all things, it's all about balance. Dr. Hostin said the bottom curve should go away on its own once we fix the top part. The good news is the rod will only need to be in the top part of my back, so I'll still be able to bend and move the bottom part of my back, which is really where most back movement occurs.

Dr. Hostin showed my mom and I my x-rays (I'll ask if I can get a copy of these to put on here and will save my analysis of what shocked me about x-rays til then) and the x-rays of similar (anonymous) patients. He answered the few questions we could think of then. My list since has kept growing.

My mom was all parental and asked the young whipper-snapper about his experience. Once satisfied, we asked if he ever had a patient who died on the table or ended up paralyzed. No and no, so that's good. One scary note, I read a statistic that 1 in 100 who have the surgery could end up paralyzed. No guarantees, but Dr. Hostin said this won't be the case for me.

We asked the dangers, which are:

1. death (everyone has to go sometime....ha)

2. ending up paralyzed (1 in 100 chance)

3. infection (the body and metal don't always mix; if this happens, you have to have surgery again so they can clean the metal and put it back....this makes me sick to think of going through twice.)

4. (this one made me laugh) eye problems from laying on your stomach for so long

How much time will I need off from work? He said most need a month to six weeks of bed rest with six months of "taking it easy". I plan on asking more questions about this later.

Then we left. The next step is to set up the surgery.

Since then

I left completely cool with the situation. I was sure I would cry if the doc said surgery. That was one reason to bring the mother. But I didn't. I even felt a little relieved afterward. Maybe it was just fear of the unknown that had freaked me out before. Now I knew and I accepted it.

Or at least that's what I thought. Then last week everything changed. This post is getting too long, so we'll delve into feelings next time. Class dismissed.