A Scoliosis Story When do beginnings start
[Music]
a girl trying on a dress with her mom
seems like a pretty normal situation but
there’s something about that dress
it just didn’t fit right it didn’t look
right
so she wanted her mother to get it
tailored one time
two times three times it reached a point
where the t where the taylor s
asked to see the girl in person
insisting that the measurements just had
to be correct at this point
it’s not the dress mom it’s the girl she
was told
that there wasn’t anything wrong with
the dress but something wrong with her
that girl was me and after meeting with
four different doctors and
three months of failed chirotherapy i
was finally diagnosed with scoliosis
for those who don’t know scoliosis is a
spinal disorder
the spine is made up of multiple bones
called vertebrae that are connected by
elastic tissues called fibrocartilage
scoliosis is when your vertebrae form a
curved line in an
s or c shape instead of being straight
so these vertebrae are what hold you up
they hold up your entire spine they
allow you to bend
stretch balance and even walk small
curves usually don’t cause problems but
a curve that gets worse means worse for
the patient
very large curves can impair heart
functions lung functions and other major
organs
however i didn’t know that three years
ago three years ago i was simply shown
this my x-ray picture i was told i
needed to get
immediate surgery the surgeon that
diagnosed me at the time
thought it would be a good idea to tell
me all the things that could go wrong in
a spinal fusion surgery
which is not few let me tell you a
spinal fusion surgery
is one of the most major surgeries in
the medical industry
risk number one periblesia in other
words getting paralyzed in the lower
body and legs
risk number two excessive blood loss
which for an anemic person was not
reassuring
number three infection failure of the
spine to fuse
rods breaking screws dislodging and the
list goes on
and honestly he lost me at paralyzed all
i could think about was
you’ll never walk down the aisle you’ll
never walk up to get your diploma
never never never and in that moment i
took a glance at my mother
and it was just a glance i could have
imagined it but there’s not
my mother with tears in her eyes there
sat
the woman whom i thought was the
strongest in the world
with eyes filled to the brim
and that was when i decided to put up my
big girl facade
i took a deep breath i pretended to be
cool calm and collected
keywords being pretended i looked at the
doctor and i put a smile on my face and
i said
no worries i did my research i know i’m
fine
yes i did do my research but in that
research i had barely caught a glimpse
of what was yet to come
so when we went home that day my coping
mechanism
was to just drown myself in research and
i just kept reading and
reading and reading until it wasn’t
enough until i needed to hear
someone real talk about their real life
experience
so i resorted to youtube and i clicked
on a video of a girl
talking about what she went through bad
move on my end
i was not in a state to hear a girl
suffering of anorexia talk about her
failed surgery
i just i needed someone to tell me that
i was gonna be okay
and that was when i finally decided to
talk to my mom about it
i bawled my eyes out admit that i was
scared and that i didn’t want to do this
my mom worked her magic like moms do and
lended me her strength
but i was also told that i had to do
physiotherapy before surgery
and i did for about two to three months
but i was told i had to do physiotherapy
before surgery and i did for about
two to three months and then
came september 17 2017
surgery day september 21 i sat up for
the first time
and then i started walking and then i
went up the stairs
and then my favorite one i went back
home
and in order to completely recover i did
physiotherapy
three times a week and every day at home
for eight months and then winter break
came along and i got to
escape reality when we traveled for two
weeks
when we got back and i went to my
checkup
i found out that i was back to square
one
that in the span of just two weeks my
year-long hard work was gone that’s my
300th days of pain were
completely useless that i had to start
it all
all over again as well as
get a back brace a bulk of plastic
killing me on the planets seriously you
can barely breathe in that thing
that was when i had reached my lowest
lots of what’s the point
thoughts what’s the point in trying if i
continue to fail what’s the point
in bothering at all if i’m just never
gonna get better
so to move on from that dark point in my
life
to today where i love my experience i
love my scar i’ve joined
non-profit organizations dedicated to
supporting young patients
i’ve contributed in a scoliosis app
research dedicated to helping patients
throughout their journey
it’s a huge 180 and i was able to
achieve this
growth when i realized that beginnings
don’t start at the start of something
meaning a new beginning does not require
a new day or a new month or a new year
your new beginning can start whenever
you decide for it to start whenever you
get up and decide to make it happen
because at the end of the day
you’re always gonna have all this time
in your hands and it’s all completely
meaningless
unless you do something with it there is
no
right time it’s what you decide to do
with your time that makes it right
once i decided that this time i’m gonna
do it right but this time
i will get better that’s when i really
started to recover
when i learned that you must make your
beginnings not wait for them to start