Open Salon (Editor's Pick) Long Term Parking for Lisa Stander Horel: Trading Thanksgiving for a Brand New Spine (2008)

NOVEMBER 24, 2008 12:32AM

Rate: 4

the children that almost weren't, but thankfully are

Instead of a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner at Grandma’s, our daughter got a brand new shiny metal rod bound to her spine, saving her from the fiercely moving scoliosis that was crippling her 20 years ago. This child of ours could now live a full and normal life after that successful spinal surgery. That was the best Thanksgiving our family ever celebrated. Or ever will, I think.
This journey began as an ordinary summer day, late August. Expecting nothing terribly spectacular I asked The Geek how the kid’s annual check-ups went, since work meetings precluded me from joining them that day. Fine. Except for a small problem. Our youngest daughter seemed to have flunked the scoliosis check.
I was that ignorant. I had to ask what the heck a scoliosis check was. Turns out, this is a very important test, this scoliosis check. The pediatrician thought that perhaps she detected a slight curve. Curve? Well, if you bend over, shouldn’t there be a curve? Yes, a curve, but not quite the way I was thinking. This curve was not exactly in that same direction as the bend. Think of looking at someone’s spine as they bend into a yoga downward dog, and instead of a nice little curved bridge, you would see something similar to Palin’s bridge to nowhere – only shaped like a unsettling S.
The pediatrician wanted to recheck it in another month. The month flew by and back again to the pediatrician we went, who by now was visibly alarmed. She determined that the “curve” was now dangerously progressing and she thought it might be almost 45 degrees. Her panic was contagious. We now were alarmed. And sprang into action. Specialists to meet, research to do.
This was the world not quite wired with an internet to let you fulfill that need for instant information. At least not like now. So off we went to the medical school and we read volumes and copied reams of material. This was serious stuff, this scoliosis. It could be serious enough to end her life prematurely, end her ability to ever have children, to breath properly, to live beyond young adulthood if she was lucky, not to mention the physical deformities that she would be living with. One leg would be shorter, one shoulder quite a bit lower than the other and a large hump in her back would make her stoop over.

Panic turned into organized chaos. For the first time ever, we had the bad luck to have chosen an HMO because we were trying to save money. That very much limited our ability to seek out the best-specialized medical care. We saw the required HMO specialist in a city about 3 hours from where we lived. And he was a bombastic arrogant moron who didn’t like that The Geek would ask provoking questions about techniques for the inevitable surgery. The bravado that the doctor displayed was overconfidence. Turns out, he fibbed a bit about his expertise in this area and the number of surgeries he had done with this technique, which was not even the preferred cutting edge procedure at that point.
The only way out was to get our insurance changed midyear. This is where one’s fervent passion can be utilized if one is a writer. As a grant writer, I knew I might persuasively plead our case with a company that is (hint) big and blue.   Thankfully it worked. Never let it be said that a large corporation cannot not have a human side, especially when gently tapped on the shoulder with a child's well being at stake.
Free to move about the continent, we located one of the most competent children’s orthopedic scoliosis surgeons on the east coast in Boston. This guy was not at all diminished by our need to research and ask questions and it only made us better partners for the kid’s medical care.   They were marvelous with her, and she trusted them. Of course as a child she didn’t really know how much trouble she was in, nor did we want her to know. But children are not stupid. She knew enough.
To her surgical team, the surgery was more than 5 hours of grueling sweaty grunt work tugging the spine into shape, and fine motor work messing around with the spine and all those pesky, but necessary nerve bundles.
For us, it was five hours of pure agony pacing and sitting in those awful plastic chairs in the stark, fluorescent lighted waiting area, decorated with a sad plethora of Thanksgiving and premature Christmas decorations.   We accompanied her into the surgical suite while they administered the anesthesia so that we were the last vision she saw, and we were there when she awoke so we were the first face she saw. It was a hospital that knew that surgery was more than a knife and stitch, even back then. What a difference that makes for young children.
The part that was an amusing and amazing footnote was that the doctor told us to not expect her to grow much after he straightened and fused her spine. But he was wrong. She grew two inches in a little more than 5 hours during the surgery alone. Then he told us that since the spine was fused, she would not continue to grow. She entered the hospital as a 5'8" kid. She left the hospital as a 5’10” eleven year old. And by the time she was 13 years old, she was 6’1”.
This Thanksgiving marks the 20^th anniversary of her spinal surgery at Boston Children’s. I am grateful that a certain large corporation cared enough about this little girl to ignore their own rules and do the right thing. And I am grateful to a very special orthopedic surgeon and his team at Boston Children’s.

Most people are awed by her incredible posture. This very tall girl will never slouch. And the downside is that she cannever saunter through an airport security checkpoint with that much metal. Small price.

So we traded a Turkey dinner that year for a successful spinal fusion for our young daughter.

I’d say it was more than a fair trade.