Patient stories

My name is Ananya and I am 15. I started 10th grade last month. This past summer, I had spinal fusion surgery to correct my scoliosis.When I was about 12 or 13 my friends started to tease me because they noticed that I lean towards my left side.I always assumed one leg was shorter than the other and I thought that was really cool.
One day in my school swimming class I was getting ready to dive into the water when my friend shouted “Whoa, what’s wrong with your back?”. I asked her to describe what she saw and she said I had a lump on the left side of my back. She was right, when I looked in the mirror that day, one side of my back jutted out more than the other. I didn’t really care or think anything of it then.

In the middle of 9th grade I went to the doctor because of a sprained shoulder and when I asked him about my back – just to check, he said I should get an X-Ray. I found it very strange because I didn’t have any terrible pains and I always thought I was perfectly normal.

The doctors told me I had something called scoliosis. This is a condition where my spine curved in the shape of an ‘S’. My twin sister then found out that she had the same condition. We had absolutely no idea what it was. We also found out that we both neededspinal fusion surgery.

I am a competitive swimmer and I was really worried that the surgery would affect my performance. To make it worse the first surgeon we went to told me that I could never do competitive swimming again. I was horrified! No more racing! Just a few days earlier I had no idea what scoliosis was! That day in swim practice I started crying. It was a little embarrassing.Some of the parents started to say “Oh, I’m sure you will get back to swimming” but how did they know?

After I made a huge fuss, my sister and I decided to try physiotherapy instead. I started doing stretching and other exercises every morning. However, when summer came, there was no improvement and surgery was the only option. Luckily Dr. Thomas said that recovery was up to us and I could even start swimming after two months! That made me feel better. We decided to have the surgery during our summer holidays so we would have time to recover.

A week before the surgery I was spending a lot of time in the hospital, getting X-Rays and an MRI and doing all kind of tests.

I thought I was going to get really scared as the date of surgery came closer, but I knew that once I recovered, I would be normal again. I’ll admit I was a little nervous the day before the surgery when I got checked into the hospital but I guess that’s normal.

The morning of the surgery I was taken to the operating theater (OT) in a wheelchair, which I found very funny because I had no problem walking. I had to lie on a bed and they injected something into my intravenous (IV) tube and put a mask on my face.

After that the next thing I remember lying in the pediatric ICU. I imagined that I would have terrible back pain but I actually only felt quite stiff and uncomfortable. The pain was very manageable because of this big green box of painkiller that was injected through IV. I also had this cool button that I could press whenever I wanted more painkiller – of course I was pressing it every 15 minutes but the doctors didn’t have a problem with that. I really liked it when a doctor and a bunch of interns with clipboards came to interview me. I felt like I was on Greys Anatomy!

The pain and stiffness made me a little uncomfortable. I also wasn’t hungry for the first few days, not just because of the hospital food. The only other problem I had was that I couldn’t stay in one position for so long in the night.

I stood up and was able to walk a little a few days after the surgery. Standing for the first time was pretty hard but after a few days it came a bit more naturally.I heard that I would have to learn to walk again and I understood what that meant when I started to walk and didn’t know what to do with my hands.

I soon became used to the routine of eating and sleeping and doing the strange robotic movement that I called walking. It wasn’t particularly fun but after a few days my friends came to visit me in the hospital and that helped take my mind off everything. I was extremely happy to see how much taller I was. Straightening my spine had given me two inches!

After a week I was allowed to go home. For the first week at home I wasn’t allowed to go outside so I spent most of my time watching TV. Initially that wasn’t a problem but eventually it became harder and harder to just sit around all day. When I was cleared to finally walk outside I realized that I got tired very easily. I started walking more and more each day and after about a month I could walk just as much as I could before the surgery. At this time, I was off painkillers and almost had no pain!

When I started getting really bored of walking my friends and I would play Pokemon Go and walk in search of pokemon. But I was still dying to get into the water

At the two-month mark I was finally allowed to swim!The first time I got into the swimming pool I gradually settled myself into the water, I didn’t dive in without a second thought like I used to. The cold water on my skin was such a relief. I knew it would not be very easy to do laps. As I slowly started to swim it felt really stiff but after a few days of trying it became a lot easier.

Before I knew it, it was time to go back to school.

I was extremely excited, sitting at home had made me so bored! The only thing that worried me about school was taking a rolling bag because I couldn’t lift heavy weights. But it isn’t a problem; my friends lift my bag up the stairs and pick up the stationary that I clumsily drop on the ground. It is more than two months post-op and I cannot do everything yet. I realized that I had taken my ability to do swimming or other exercise for granted and after the wait I have found a new excitement for swimming that I will have forever. I am so glad that I had this surgery because now I feel so much strongerand taller. The doctors did an amazing job.