I was diagnosed with scoliosis at the age of thirteen. It was right before seventh grade and I had gone in to get my physical to play in volleyball. The doctor believed that I had scoliosis so she sent me to an orthopedist in Dubuque. They took X-rays and we found out that I did have scoliosis and that the major curve was already at about 54º. He didn’t think that a brace would help because he thought I was done growing so he said that we would watch it close and I would have to come back in six months, but if the curve got any bigger by even 1º then we would have to consider surgery. I was still able to do normal activities.
I have idiopathic scoliosis (which means there is no known cause for my scoliosis), but there was no one in our family history that we could find who had scoliosis. Before my surgery if you would look at me from the side I had one big bump on the top going out and a smaller one going in on the bottom, forming an S with a bigger bump on top then the bottom. Which was odd because it should have been curving side to side when you would look at me from the front or back, but others have had the same thing, too.
Six months later when I went back we took another series of X-rays. When we met back up with the orthopedist he said that the curve had gone up 4º to 58º which is a huge amount to increase in such a short amount of time. He told us that we should highly consider surgery because at the age of thirty I would be staring straight at the ground. So we decided that was probably the best decision. The surgery ended up being on May 29, 2010.
For my surgery