Mary B .
Mary B. : My Story
“We’ve been watching you in church for years, and I think my husband can help you.” Those words changed my life forever.
I was diagnosed with scoliosis in 1957. I wore a brace until I was 14 and did daily exercises, and the curve seemed to stabilize at 40 degrees. When I was 18 I was involved in a rear-end collision. That resulted in torn back muscles, and the curve took off. In 1970, at the age of 25, I had a spinal fusion from T9 to the sacrum with Harrington rod insertion. I spent nine months in a body cast following the surgery. In 1974 the rod was removed because it had popped loose at the top. Over the course of the next few years I began to tilt forward and to the left and the curve started worsening again. I just resigned myself to a life of back pain and “being crooked” because the doctor who did the surgery in 1970 told me I was too old at 25 to get a better correction than what he was able to achieve (82 degree lumbar curve down to 45 degrees).
Dr. Lenke and his wife approached me in the summer of 2005. By this time I was really bent forward and my ability to walk as a form of exercise was compromised by my decreasing pulmonary function and chronic pain. Dr. Lenke evaluated me and put me in a physical therapy program for five months prior to surgery. His initial thought was that he could fix my sagittal balance (the forward tipping), but there wasn’t much he could do with the S-curve. At my pre-op visit the news was more encouraging – the therapy had helped me to get more flexibility in my spine, and he thought he could do something with the curve. So, I had the surgery – fusion from T2 to the sacrum with rods and pedicle screws and a vertebrectomy at L1 – in March 2006, six weeks before my 61st birthday.
I will forever be grateful to Dr. Lenke for giving me a quality of life I never thought possible.
The results are better than I could ever have imagined! I can stand straight. The curve is all but gone. I have no ugly humps in my back. My pulmonary function has improved so I can walk the neighborhood again. I can go shopping and clean my house without being in excruciating pain. In fact, I am pain free after almost 40 years of daily pain. '
