If you're reading this, you probably already know what it is. In fact, you probably have it. (Unless you're just a weirdo who reads medical stories for fun. Haha...) So I'll keep things short and to the point.
A normal person's spine runs in a straight line. The spine of someone with scoliosis is curved. It can be curved in one direction, the other, or both. This results in your spine looking like a C, a backwards C, or an S.
About 2% of the population has it, but most of them don't have it bad, and it never causes them any health problems (other than maybe some slight aching).
But a small portion of that 2% have it bad. For them, there are two main ways to treat scoliosis: bracing, and surgery.
Bracing helps keep your curve from progressing too quickly while you're still growing. It slows down the rate at which your back gets worse, but that's all it does. It doesn't stop it completely, and it certainly doesn't make it any better. Bracing is really only used on kids (and only on kids with a curve of around 20+ degrees), and all it does is post-pone surgery.
Surgery is recommended if you have a degree of 45+. Different doctors say different things; some say 40, some say 50. The surgery is called Spinal Fusion. There are two ways to do it: from the front (anterior), and from the back (posterior). Posterior is the most common. That means they slice you open from basically the top of your neck down to your butt (although the length of the incision varies from patient to patient), and hammer your bones back in place. (I watched a YouTube video and it made me a bit nauseous...) Then they stick a metal rod up either side of your spine, and secure the rods with some nuts and screws.
Recovery time is supposedly around 6-8 weeks of physical therapy, and you can't go to school at all during this time. Even when you can go back, you can't do anything particularly athletic for three months. But in theory, you'll be completely back to normal eventually. I wouldn't know, as I haven't had the surgery yet. I'll probably be getting it next summer, but I'll update this book in the meantime whenever I go to another doctor.
Now for the beginning of my story...
YOU ARE READING
Scoliosis
Non-FictionHi, there... So I've read almost every Wattpad story about Scoliosis and honestly most of them suck, whether from grammatical errors or lack of a strict plot. So I'm going to tell my own story instead, as it happens. Hopefully I can offer some advi...
