Hello, my fellow scoliosis pals… my name is Katy. I live in Florida! My story goes like this: One summer ago, when I was 11 or 12 I went to Mexico for a vacation. I was walking the beach with my parents and brother, when all of a sudden my mom popped the question…. Why are you bending weird like that…stand up straight?! OK, so I tried, but it hurt my back….

A couple months later my family moved from California to Florida! Ugh…When I was going to the doctors for the first time in Florida my mom just wanted to ask the doctor why my back was like that. Then he said it is SCOLIOSIS!!! I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded bad.

I went to see another doctor. He did numerous X-rays and tests and finally he came to a conclusion that I definitely had scoliosis and would watch it over the months.

After a couple of months my curvature grew form 19-20 to 27-32! I was shock by then…He told me to try a brace and see if that will work!

THE BRACE SUCKED!!!!! I know, it was embarrassing, sweaty all the time, and stressful, oh and did I mention a pain in the neck!! I had to wear it to school and for 16 to 18 hrs a day. I absolutely thought it was worthless! Every time people asked why I had to wear it and then I had to tell them the story!!! And plus people would stare constantly…I wanted to break down crying.

After a year of it I revisited him and did x-rays as usual and now I found out the brace actually made it worse... thanks brace! Now my curvature was at 56-57 degrees… I didn’t understand why it did that….then Dr. Bayhnam gave me the talk about options…. We picked having surgery.

SURGERY! Oh no… My surgery was on Oct, 23, 06 at St Mary’s Hospital! I remember crying before going in and I remember the purple room they were going to do it in. It was like a reenactment of Grey’s Anatomy!

After the surgery was hard, I had to bare laying in a bed for 9 days… getting up every 3 to 4 hrs for the lung breathing thing and having needles, machines, chest tube, brace and an uncomfortable bed! Walking all over again. :(

I was out of school for 3 months and had to do Homebound, which was fine. When I got back to school everyone missed me.

I went back to get stitches taken out and that was painful, 37! But I lived. :)

After a couple of months I they gave me a check up and they said they were going to watch my lower lumbar since it would eventually straighten as the upper would go. But, I just went to another check up and did more x-rays and found out that it is actually making it worse not getting better at all. It kind of looked like it did before my surgery, WHICH WAS BAD!!

Now, I’m going to have another surgery this summer...which stinks because I’m only going to have 1 wk of it…. This time they have to put another bar and more screws on top of the other one and do a little plastic surgery on my scar already.

What I have learned... even though the experience was difficult I got through it with strength and will and I’m proud to say that I’m a scoliosis patient and I want everyone to know that you will go through it and think it is worthless but in the end it is worth it.

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