The Good Life | Girls who have been there back others with scoliosis
Less than eight weeks after spinal surgery to correct her scoliosis, Allie Thompson was experiencing many of the usual side effects.
The eighth-grader relied on friends to carry her books at Worthingway Middle School.
To sit more comfortably, she propped up a pillow on the back of her desk chair. She itched because of pain medications.
“A friend asked me, ‘How is ... (your shoulder) numb and hurting at the same time?'" Thompson, 14, said at the August meeting of the Columbus chapter of the Curvy Girls Scoliosis Support Group. “ I told her, ‘If you were me, you’d understand.'"
Lakeitha Baker and Alyse Dorton understood: Both had had similar surgeries to install metal rods to correct curved spines — Dorton in June 2011 and Baker a year later.
Eight months ago, the two Columbus Alternative High School seniors started the support group to give girls such as Thompson a place to discuss uncomfortable back braces, calm fears about surgery and educate the community about scoliosis.
Eight girls, ages 12 to 17, attend the monthly meetings.
From 2 to 3 percent of the population has a spinal curve of 10 degrees or more, said Allan Beebe, a pediatric surgeon at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Teenage girls who have a curve with no identifiable cause outnumber boys with the condition 10-to-1.
Few patients progress to a 50-degree curve, the point at which Beebe begins talking about surgery as a treatment.
The support group, he said, gives him another resource to offer families confronting the disorder.
“I can tell them it’s going to hurt, but what does that mean?” Beebe said. “They can ask someone who has been through it, and it can allay some of their anxieties.”
Dorton and her mother, Sandy, were overwhelmed when the diagnosis of scoliosis was made in sixth grade.
Doctors recommended that she wear a back brace for 23 hours a day.
The brace made Dorton feel different.
“We’ll not talk about the times I snuck out of it,” Dorton said of hiding it under her bed or in her locker.
“You get creative.”
Baker, whose ailment was diagnosed in seventh grade, “locked the brace away in her closet” when she started high school.
Their spinal curves had worsened to the point that they required surgery despite the braces.
Without surgery, a curve could eventually limit physical activities or cause breathing problems.
After her surgery at Children’s, Dorton wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavier than 5 pounds for almost a year.
The 15-inch scar on her back attracted the attention of Baker, who realized, along with Dorton, they had a “common bond.”
Dorton supported Baker through her surgery, after which they discovered Curvy Girls, an organization founded in 2006 that has almost 50 chapters nationwide.
Although the first meeting drew just one girl and her family, Baker’s mother, Shauron Kelsor, saw the potential.
“That family was so confused, so scared,” Kelsor said. “I could see the ministry of it.”
Thompson had surgery in July.
“My friends at school have never heard of scoliosis, have never had surgery like this,” she said. “It’s a blessing to know that there are people like me and I can ask questions.”
