#Scoliosis Awareness Month

[ryan-monster]

It's so funny to me that June is not only pride month BUT ALSO, Scoliosis Awareness Month. You really cannot be caught being straight this month.

[sumthincool]

Happy pride/scoliosis awareness month ❤️

[erstersauce]

HAPPY PRIDE AND SCOLIOSIS AWARENESS MONTH!!!!! 🌈🫶🎉✨

JUST SO GAY MY SPINE CANT EVEN BE STRAIGHT (ive been waiting so long to make that joke ajdjaidjsurjdfjdpapdjajHEHEHEHHE)

[vind3miat0r]

happy scoliosis awareness month, everyone be aware of fool!Milo

[cozy-lake]

It’s June, which is pride month, but it’s also scoliosis awareness month! This means I get to celebrate multiple ways in which I am not straight this month.

I’m going to talk a little bit about what having scoliosis has been like for me under the cut, so feel free to read on if you’re interested!

Content warning for discussion of hospitals, medical issues, surgery, and anesthesia.

Firstly, what is scoliosis? Scoliosis is a “sideways curvature of the spine”, basically, when your spine is not straight. Scoliosis is more common in AFAB people and usually occurs immediately after the onset of puberty, or right before (depending when the growth spurt happens). For a lot of people, the curvature in their spine is minor and does not require any major medical intervention, but for others, a back brace or even surgery is needed.

What are some of the symptoms of scoliosis? Back pain is a very common symptom, but also physical deformity, including one shoulder being higher than the other or an uneven waist. If untreated, it can lead to severe complications later in life.

Now, I’ll get into my personal experience with scoliosis. Please know that these are only my experiences and not everyone will share my thoughts! I want to talk about it, again, since it’s scoliosis awareness month, but keep in mind that everyone’s journey is different.

Shortly after I turned eleven years old, I went for my yearly checkup, and my doctor discovered a small curve in my spine. He sent me for further testing and x-rays, and soon after I was fitted for a back brace. This was a hard plastic brace that wrapped around my torso, from right below my chest to my pelvis. It was incredibly tight, and compressed my spine to (hopefully) straighten out the curves. I had to wear this brace for 18-20 hours per day. For a young person, this was not easy, especially since this was also the first school year in which I had to get changed for gym class in front of classmates.

I was fitted for the brace in January. In May/June-ish of the same year, I had a checkup and was told I was doing well and should keep wearing the brace. That summer was rough- the brace was hot, and made it hard to do stuff I loved like swimming, biking, etc. I had another appointment in August, and it was actually the first time in 8 months that I didn’t wear the brace overnight. It was at that appointment that I was told the brace wasn’t working, and I needed to get surgery. I had three curves in my spine, and the largest of the three was 50°, too severe to be fixed with a brace.

I got the surgery in December of that year. The main type of surgery done for scoliosis is known as spinal fusion, which is incredibly invasive and has a years-long healing process. Luckily, my mom did her research, and found a newer type of surgery that was being offered for scoliosis, known as vetebral body tethering or VBT, and was less invasive. I won’t go into the details of the surgery, mainly because I was twelve years old at the time and didn’t fully understand it myself (but I’m happy to talk more if anyone wants me to). It was such a new technique at the time, though, that the closest doctor to where I live practiced in a city that was 646 miles/1039 km away. I’m incredibly lucky and privileged to have been able to travel there and get the surgery, and though it wasn’t a great experience, I am grateful that I was able to get it and that I wasn’t put on a years-long waiting list.

Anyway, the surgery lasted for about 8 hours, but I was out for 36 hours. The doctors had me up and walking within 2 hours of waking up, but I was in the hospital for about a week total. I was out of school for three months. I will always be thankful for my best friend at the time, who really helped me through that time of my life (I’m so thankful for them, in fact, that I’m planning to marry them). The doctors considered me “fully healed” after a year, but to this day, I still experience back pain and dizziness much easier than others. I have to get x-rays 1-2 times a year to make sure I’m still healing well (I am) and every couple of years, I travel back to the hospital to meet with my surgeon.

Scoliosis is a huge part of my life, and I’m always happy to talk about it. Please feel free to ask me questions here or on my instagram cozy_lake (I tend to be more active on there) as I plan to post this there as well. I’m so glad that there’s a month for scoliosis awareness, and I hope that this post helped you to learn more about it! :)

[mjsakurea]

June is both Pride and Scoliosis Awareness Month, so as a bisexual with scoliosis everyone is legally required to be doubly aware of me, this has been a PSA

[notadventuring]

Happy pride month & scoliosis awareness month!!

[just-a-little-bit-of-sugar]

Oh to be a queer person with scoliosis who was born in June, during June 🥰

[fiddler-sticks]

Happy pride month to me, happy scoliosis awareness month to my mom, and a happy fuck you to my grandma who is queerphobic and made my mom work through copious amounts of back pain when she was younger :D

[quequowle-blog]

[kazifatagar]

ALTY Orthopaedic Hospital and MHTC To Promote Malaysia As Preferred Orthopaedic Healthcare Destination

ALTY Orthopaedic Hospital and Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC) have partnered to promote Malaysia as a top destination for orthopaedic medical tourism. To celebrate their collaboration, they are offering free posture screenings to arriving tourists at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) during International Scoliosis Awareness Month. Additionally, they aim to highlight MHTC’s…

[ejaydoeshisbest]

How deformed must I be and how frequently should I experience chronic pain to qualify for some small consideration in everyday life?

Went to the orthopedic. Didn’t appreciate how they delivered the next step for managing my scoliosis. Like, eff, I’m sorry that I was an impoverished corporate slave living in a third-world country and don’t have the financial resources or the time to monitor my curve progression. Freaking arrogant swine.

And they sounded so smug and dismissive when I asked if I was eligible for a PWD ID as if I had no right to. Like it was a bother that I was asking for their signature. I felt like a pauper begging for gold.

“Oh, is that what you want?” the doc said, brow arched.

It made me feel smaller than I already am. How deformed must I be and how frequently should I experience chronic pain to qualify for some small consideration in everyday life?

Also stung hearing the weighted confirmation that there truly is nothing to be done but watch my body slowly twist even more grotesquely as I get old. Nothing we can do but try not to feel ugly and stay fit as I decline each year. Better get to mountain climbing and travel while I still can.

I grit my teeth and dig my knuckles into my back, trying to chase away the strain. I wince as I brace myself for the daily brutal commute, standing for hours, hips and back screaming for mercy, stuck in traffic.

Words: Ejay Diwas

[ididit-allofit-foryou]

hapy disability pride month! here's all the drawings i've done so far! (many more to come!)

[dawnthefluffyduck]

I drew this explanation post for why I was completely inactive for a week, but then felt too anxious and drained to post it, and subsequently disappeared for a second week

Two main blog drawings and one side blog wip later, I remembered I made this and still think it's funny, so even though I stopped being dead (TM) I still wanted to share lol

Brief series of events at work

^^^old, but I'm still taking it easy so posts on both this blog and my alt will continue to be scattered for now

[sweetsncandies]

this man is not straight and neither is his back

[kyoupann]

From almost a year ago; what multiple scoliosis looks on me

So, my hip is a lil bit slanted and that makes one of my legs longer than the other; and so my spine tried to balance things out by turning into an S-shape. I never really considered it a disability because I can go on with my day most days without pain, even when the doctor who diagnosed me was like "yup, if you have kids you're gonna suffer even more and by 40 you'll probs need a wheelchair";

however, there are moments after walking for long periods (or really just bad days) where my hips hurt so bad I just wanna pass out, trying to walk real fast makes my right hip make a popping sound and it's painful, like a cramp. When I am with people that walk faster than my top speed (most of my friends rip) I either gotta try to keep up and bear the pain or stay behind watching the distance between us grow. It's really isolating in that sense. I can't lift more than 15k without my back resenting it later (I can't carry one of my dogs :( ) and let's not talk about sports that involve running 😂 I used to dance and that in of itself was a challenge for me; I'd be so sore after each routine, even after warming up. Wearing a back-brace(? Support thingy helps when sitting down for long periods but other than stretching exercises, there isn't much I can do about my fucked up back

Sometime all September and October last year I was going through a very hard time dealing with body image issues. Tbh, I'm still am. So I did the very logical thing of taking some pics and painting them. This was the first time I had ever done some sort of portrait and it was cathartic in a way; I encountered the idea that my body will never look a certain way because of my back issues. I have always had "love handles" more noticeable on one side than the other. I'd think that if my back was a bit straighter, I'd probably not have them at all. The amount of times I've tried to stand as straight as possible, trying to get them to disappear... yeah, that's embarrassing. But oh well, surgery isn't really an option for me so I gotta work on making peace with them🫠. Which is something I want to work on, so here's to that!

Anyways, I spent a good chunk of this month thinking if I should post in this so here it goes aaa