Who else has a funky back?

I run for my mental health even more than for my physical health. (Thanks for passing along the apple body shape though, making the latter necessary, Nana 😑 )

I love smelling the air, taking in the surroundings (pretty flowers, weird neighbors, etc.), and sweating. Man I love sweating; it feels like ickiness — every type of it, from environmental to mental — is leaving your body.

It’s how I get clarification on thought nuggets that’ve been playing on a loop in my head, and practice conversations I’m anxious to have. I like visualizing that my feet are stomping out my problems when they hit the concrete. Sometimes I imagine a specific person’s face meeting the bottom of my shoe. 😬

But I should clarify that for the past few years I’ve been jogging. I used to run, and maybe I will again. I’m currently letting too much time lapse between runs — err, jogs — though, so I’m not conditioned enough to keep a running pace for miles at a time.

The culprit is leg pain, mostly in my right knee. My hips are uneven because of idiopathic scoliosis, so it’s as if my legs are different lengths, with the right leg the “longer” one. This creates a cascade of musculoskeletal issues that are getting harder to ignore or fight through as I age.

It’s reached a tipping point, so I’m researching local physical therapy practices to see where my body’s at and correct the problems as much as possible. To help the therapist get the best picture of what’s going on in my body, I grabbed my spinal x-rays from my parents’ house a few weeks ago.

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I’ve been working with a therapist on building my self-esteem, and realize I need to give some resiliency points to 12-year-old Lauren — I went through some shit with this.

One of my clearest middle school memories is scoliosis screening day, when we reported in small clusters alphabetically to the nurse’s office. She took extra time on my back (and Mary’s*) and took longer to make notes for us than she had the other kids.

Everybody knows what that freakin’ means.

I remember that Damaso Maldonado — we were in homeroom together from 7th through 12th grades** — clearly saw the worry in my eyes, and gave me a stoic, comforting nod.

A letter arrived at home a few days later to confirm my suspicions; it notified my parents that they should have my pediatrician check it out. (Related: who else went to their pediatrician until they were 16? Mine even pierced my ears. I digress.) A couple weeks after that I was diagnosed, and we headed to duPont Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, DE, an hour and a half away, because my dad’s colleagues (he worked in health care) told him it was the best for adolescent scoliosis.

I have a 32 degree thoracic scoliotic curve convex to the right, and a 32 degree lumbar scoliotic curve convex to the left. This means I have Type 2 moderate idiopathic scoliosis. Because my scoliotic curves are convex, my ribs are spread a little farther apart than normal.

That’s where Dr. Mangeshkumar explained that I was at least fortunate to have Type 2 — my lumbar and thoracic curves form an “S” shape to somewhat compensate for each other, and it’s good that the curvature degrees are equal. He said I would be able to avoid surgery, and prescribed me a Wilmington brace to be worn all the time at home.

I cried one time over the whole thing: the first night I had to wear it. You have to pull its straps really tight, so until I built up the arm strength to do it myself, my dad had to do it — he called it “buckling me in,” which depending on the type of teen you are, could’ve gone two ways. I am proud to say I appreciated it.

But that first evening after getting buckled in, as I brushed my teeth before bed, I looked in the mirror and lost it, blubbering tears, snot, and toothpaste all over my face (and brace).

I wore that brace until I was almost 17. Twice yearly visits to duPont made for lots of good stories. Two of my favorites:

• As we chatted during one appointment, Dr. Mangeshkumar said that when he’s on vacation at the beach with his family, he will occasionally see a child with obvious scoliosis, and it takes all of his restraint to not approach their parents and ask if they’re being treated yet. I thought this was very sweet. Another thing I appreciated very much about him was his bluntness. When I asked him, “Would you have said something to my parents?” he responded: “Oh yes, absolutely — that hump on your right side.”

• At my second to last appointment, the time between getting an x-ray and seeing the doctor was especially long; we waited in the exam room for over an hour. When it was over and I’d changed back into my clothes, I told my parents I weirdly felt like I would miss the hospital, especially the robes. My mom took the robe from the exam table and stuffed it in her purse, explaining, “We paid enough money to these people over the years. We’re taking the damn robe.”

I still have the damn robe! It’s very soft:

In conclusion: big hugs to my fellow scoliosis people. I’d love for my first blog comments to be your own stories.

Also, most pediatric orthopedic specialists no longer recommend the Wilmington brace, citing that prolonged studies show it doesn’t actually do much good. [Insert sad trombone noise.]

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Footnotes:

* “Mary” is a fake name (but it rhymes with her real one, hehe) for my school bully. She selected me in 4th grade when we were in the same class, going with the good ol’ “teacher’s pet” condemnation. Senior year of high school I decided to do powderpuff football for lord knows what reason, and on the very first practice she shoved me to the ground so forcefully that it knocked the wind out of me. When I caught my breath again I called her a twat (I had just learned the term and was enamored), got up, grabbed my stuff, and kept walking until I got to my car, and drove away. I was a powderpuff for, eh… about 30 minutes.

** Whenever I’m stuck watching something boring, I think about this one time — again, senior year of high school: I was sitting next to Damaso in our assigned auditorium seats, watching the marching band perform for some reason. But Damaso was not impressed, he fell asleep about 20 minutes in — head tilted back, mouth wide open, snoring with hardy force. Sometimes his snores seemed to mesh with the music, and this gave me and Amy Lynch (on his other side) full-throttle belly laughs.

Wait… now I need to tell another quick story about my beloved homeroom. At Hempfield High School, each homeroom is responsible for selecting two nominees — a boy and girl — for homecoming court. Somehow, my peers with last names beginning with La- through My- were a special, forward-thinking bunch. None of us girls wanted the nomination, so we all decided to select Matt Leonard, who was delighted to receive the honor. Our homeroom teacher was fine with it, but the school put the kibosh on it. They said we could pick a girl, or give up our rights to picking nominees. I’m proud to say we stood our ground: my class’s court was two people short 🤘

† I took an art class in college in which we did live nude model figure drawings with charcoal. It made me feel soooo artsy. I say this with proper humility: I’m a good drawer, and I made some pretty, pretty gorgeous nudes. I know I brought them back to my parents’ house after graduating, and I figure they have to be in the basement somewhere — but I’ve been searching for my nudes for over a decade now, and no sign of them anywhere. What happened to my nudes?