Hi, my name is Julia, and I love to sing, paint, shop, and travel. I also have idiopathic adolescent scoliosis.
I remember vividly the day my pediatrician ordered x-rays for my back after suspecting I might have scoliosis when I was 12. Sure enough, I would need bracing to stop my spinal curves — 25 and 19 degrees respectively — from progressing and requiring surgery.
For 20 to 18 hours a day I felt like I couldn’t breathe, much less sing in my school choir. I covered up my bulky, alien plastic cage with baggy clothes, developing self consciousness and low self esteem. I tried to pull the straps as tight as possible to minimalize the bulky plastic as much as possible, at the expense of my comfort and breath support. Looking in the mirror, I looked unnatural and felt like a science experiment.
I especially hated P.E. — changing in front of other girls into my gym clothes and putting my brace in the locker, reluctantly explaining what in the world this strange plastic corset was to my confused classmates.
I was an active kid; I loved climbing trees around my neighborhood, doing backwalkovers on my front lawn, and swinging on the monkey bars at the playground. In my brace, I felt immobile and confined. The only thing I liked about it was that it was my favorite color: pink.
Gradually, I wore the brace less and less as my growing slowed down, until I only wore it at night as a freshman in high school. That same year, one of my best friends got the same diagnosis — her spinal curves were almost 40 degrees, and if she didn’t begin bracing it would require surgery. I helped her find clothes to wear underneath the brace, learn how to survive hot summers with scoliosis, and became an outlet she could talk to about our shared experiences.
I wish I had had someone to talk with about scoliosis when I was struggling, so now I get to be that person. My goal is to normalize scoliosis so that kids don’t have to feel self conscious about their bodies and treatments.
Now, my friend and I both sing in choir together, travel together, and laugh harder than we ever could have with our braces on together. Recently, we started Follow the Curve, a small business selling scoliosis-themed jewelry and art, donating the proceeds to fund scoliosis reaserch.
