This Summer, Final Fusion

     Hello again people with a screens in front of their faces; it isI, Scoliatic the wise, and today I shall talk about my upcoming final surgery and how my expansion went along with the news that I will not be going to Why Not You Academy, but either Big Picture, or Highline. If you enjoy my blog and want to be notified when a new one comes out, there is a follow button on the homepage that you can click, press, or leave alone. Also, currently the only way that I can gain new viewers is by word of mouth, text, Email, or smoke signal, so if you can, please share it with friends and family.

    If you read my previous post you know that I had my expansion on Monday where they take a menacing magnetic device that makes my rods elongate with the power of magnetism. This expansion wasn't the best or the worst but could've gone better. As I arrived to the towering structure of medical mastery, I felt a sense of dread. It was once again time for the magnetic ritual. before the expansion I had another appointment, a pulmonary function test. It was to make sure that my lungs didn't die more than they already were. What I had to do was breath really hard into a tube and they measured my breathing powers. They then compare my lung powers to my height if I didn't have scoliosis (I would be 6 feet tall!) Then it was time to head over to the expansion room.

    I had to wait for a while before the procedure which did not help my nerves at all and once I was taken back to the expansion chamber I was trying very hard to remind myself that my last expansion wasn't too bad. Once in the chamber they started the procedure almost immediately and after a bit of trouble locating the magnetic parts of my rod, got to business. They started out with the left side and it seemed to be going well. It didn't seem to be jumping, it didn't hurt, and I felt fine. It seemed fine because it wasn't fine. The rod had decided that it wasn't going to expand very much today and would prefer to just be stubborn and not move. They then went on to try the right side, which while it was more cooperative in terms of expanding, decided that it wanted to complain while doing so and smashed the inflict pain button. I had to ask them to pause after a while and once I stopped hurting they continued. After they did the right side they tried to do both at the same time to see if they could get some more out of both but at that point the dastardly duo of devilishness had decided to not move. The doctors wished that they had gotten more length out of the rods but were happy that they got a decent amount out of the one on the right since it hadn't agreed with them last time.

    After that I went to a different room to talk with the doctors about the near future. I'm not going to go into detail about what we talked about because that's more private but it was about how my back hump and chest protrusion had expanded and that the chest protrusion was a way that my body gave itself more room for my lungs to expand. Then we got to the topic of my final fusion.

    For those who don't know what a final fusion is, its the big final surgery that some people with scoliosis get. What they do is they fuse my vertebrae into one long bone with bone graft. They will also replace my current rods with non expandable ones. It is a very large surgery and kind of dangerous too. Many things could go wrong and all surgeries are a roll of the dice. After the surgery, I have six months of recovery and I can't go to dance in that time so that I can heal properly. I wont be able to carry anything over 10 pounds and I will probably lose a lot of my not very existent muscle mass. The fusion should also correct my rotation and that means decreased back hump. Because of all of these corrections I will probably have a hard time walking at first and will have a different center of balance.  Before I knew of the final fusion I always thought that I would have my rods removed and that my scoliosis would be almost completely corrected. I thought that my back hump would be completely corrected and that I would be almost normal. I hoped, wished, and prayed, that I would be able to bend, twist, and rotate my spine, but no I won't, can't, and never will be able to move my spine. As I sit here writing this post and listening to Jack Stauber, I think, "At least I'm alive and can communicate with other living beings." Things could be a lot worse for me and while I have severe scoliosis I don't have the worst.

    Thanks for reading fellow living beings, I really am enjoying writing this blog. I can easily communicate about my experiences and have fun doing it. In a way, its also kind of therapeutic and if I get worried about something I can look at this and realize I have been through worse. Thanks for reading and if you can, follow and share.