Imagine this: You’re at the beach with your 13-year-old teen. They bend over to pick up a towel and you notice a hump on one side of their back. Upon returning home, you go to your family doctor. Your teen is asked to bend forward, and the doctor glances at their back. “It looks like it might be scoliosis, so let’s send for an X-Ray.” Walking out of the clinic, your mind is buzzing with questions.
A week later, the X-Ray results show a 38° C-shaped curve in your child’s spine. The doc says there’s a 9-month wait to see a specialist at Children’s Hospital, and the only thing you can do now is ‘wait and see’. Google shows pages of mixed advice about scoliosis and other spinal deformities – the anxiety of the unknown becomes overwhelming. You even see posts about a surgery which would fully fuse your teen’s spine.
Now, shift into the teen’s shoes: your mom is freaking out, you don’t get why. The doctor said something about a curve, so you search #scoliosis on instagram – people post about wearing huge plastic braces, having back pain, undergoing surgeries. You don’t know ANYone at school who has scoliosis. “What is going to happen to me? What are people at school going to think?”