Bracing Ourselves

A simple well visit to the pediatrician from July 2014 will stick with us for a while. Well visits are supposed to be pretty low-maintenance-- in and out, everything's great, cover your eye and read the 4th line, ok try the 5th line, breathe in, breathe out, breathe deeply, see you in a year, maybe try eating some vegetables for a change.

This time it was different - and not just because all three kids were actually in the Well Room at the same time. The middle child was shown to not have any muscles at all based on some seriously gross gross motor skills, but my daughter also received some significant, routine-altering news at the same visit.

I'll admit, when I got home from work, and my wife informed me that our daughter may have scoliosis. at first I may have laughed a little. When I was in junior high, every single one of us was diagnosed with scoliosis, or its distant cousin "possible scoliosis."


Our universal sign for "the bathroom is in use."

This came after getting our annual physical which involved having an 85-year-old man grab our scrotum, us turning our heads, coughing, then contorting our bodies into the shape of a lower-case "n." Pretty sure only the last part was used in the "possible scoliosis"diagnosis. But we ALL had possible scoliosis. I knew kids were advanced these days--I didn't learn my multiplication tables nearly as early as my daughter is-- but receiving the "possible scoliosis" treatment six years in front of her Daddy? Unheard of.

Still, in the interest of due diligence, we accompanied our daughter to the children's hospital just to make sure. Sure enough, the x-rays revealed a 33-degree curvature of the spine. Textbook scoliosis. (How could we as parents not see it? Draw an imaginary line from one shoulder blade to another, you get a cliff the Price Is Right yodeler is afraid to scale. How do we NOT see that? What kind of parents are we?)

What does this mean? It means to avoid surgery later in life, my daughter would need to wear a brace for the balance of her growing years. 22 hours a day, every day until she's done growing. Nobody does anything for 22 hours a day, especially 7-year-olds, without a crying fit or a nearly unlawful amount in bribery. This was going to be a challenge. Not sure if we were ready for it.

At first our daughter embraced it. The back brace she'd wear like a giant Band-Aid. Kids love Band-Aids because they bring an disproportionate amount of attention to its bearer, so when you have a plastic Band-aid the size of your torso, you probably get to sit in the queen chair for a week and win Teacher's Pet status indefinitely.



A little before and after.

But then stark reality started to set in. 22 hours with that thing on. A tight piece of plastic, wrapped around your back, while you sleep, while you sit in school, while you live. This thing and its larger versions will grow with you and be a part of you for the rest of your childhood. And you KNOW your parents will nag you about it. You may take it off to shower, to play your violin, to go to gym class. That's it. So, yeah, a little apprehension.

But in yet another example of kids proving more resilient than their parents, she's killing this brace thing. Soon after receiving the brace, my daughter's teacher had her stand up in the front of the class and explain just what was going on (show-and-tell style.) She explained why she got to sit "in the spinny chair" with a pillow when the rest of the kids are sitting on the floor, and why she has to run down to the school nurse every Tuesday before gym class. She explained that her spine was "crooked" and the brace would help keep it from getting worse.


And that's why second-grade kids are awesome-- they get it. Maybe not right away, but eventually they get it. They're curious but innocent. They seek answers but don't judge. They think everything is cool and are so willing and able to adapt. We should all be so smartly naive.

Within weeks, the brace became virtually a non-issue, and now it's part of who she is and who she will be. She may never get to the 22-hour plateau, but close enough. There are so many reasons to be thankful in this situation: To the hospital, for giving my daughter the best attention you can give a girl and for talking us through the options, pros and cons, and for talking us down off the ledge. To our daughter's teacher, who made her feel so comfortable and let her educate her own classmates. And to our pediatrician, who first suspected trouble at a routine well visit...without that heads-up, we may never have known until surgery was the only option. (Go to your well visits folks!)

And most thankful for a brave little girl who understands what she needs to do to get better. This potential game-changer then turns out to be just a bump in the road. Just a part of life. There was, however, a time when my daughter wanted to commemorate the whole thing with a family video to show we were "all about that brace (that brace)." We poiltely declined. Besides, that's been done already I think. Done better than we can.



She can still do this with a brace on. I never could.

Gross Motor Skills

The children had their annual well visits to the doctor earlier this week, and we're of course relieved and blessed to report that we won't soon be the subjects of a Dr. Nancy Snyderman segment on the Today Show. Still, this wasn't the typical well visit, as the good doctor gave a some take-home assignment this time.

Today the newly minted 5-year-old  was diagnosed with something called hypermobility, which sounds like something this guy would have suffered from (or maybe enjoyed), but instead is something this guy has. This means that he's double-jointed, I think, but "double-jointed" doesn't sound medical enough. It also means that his fine motor skills are anything but. But in order to strengthen his fine motor skills, he must first strengthen his gross motor skills. (We'll pause here and allow you to come up with your best machine-gun farting in his sleep jokes. All of them are applicable and appreciated. Go ahead, we'll wait.)

No. Gross motor skills instead are things like being able to jump off the couch onto your little brother's head, throwing a baseball at your little brother's head, or passing a routine sobriety test. Also the essential skill of hopping on one foot on your brother's head, something that admittedly I've never seen him do, though not out of pity. The fact that he can't stand, let alone hop, on one foot at the age of five without falling into the bookshelf is terrifying to me, because that means he's just like me. I have no gross motor skillz. I didn't learn to tie my shoes until third grade. Just last year (last year) at a children's museum I fell off a balance thingie and plowed over a mother AND her daughter. This was LAST YEAR.

In order to avoid those embarrassments and many like them befalling my son, we'll be taking him to OT, which is not overtime, but Occupational Therapy, yet another thing that sounds like something it's not. "After a rough day at the office, I just need to go to the bar for some Occupational Therapy." Wrong. This OT involves training that will enhance his muscles so that when it comes down to fine motor skills, his handwriting won't look like the crawler on al-Jazeera TV (unless he wants it to) and he'll be able to load the copy machine at work without producing a ream of accordion fans.

The kid comes by it honestly, though. After 39 years it didn't seem abnormal to me that I can bend my index finger back a little. And my wife, at the ripe old age of...at a ripe age, didn't realize that not everyone can touch their wrist with their thumb. Every time I think about touching my wrist with my thumb, my thumb hurts as I feel it breaking off into my lap. The Rocky Statue is more likely to be able to touch its wrist with its thumb. The last thing I need is to lack opposable thumbs, so I don't even try. In fact, I don't even look at my thumbs any more. I really like having thumbs.

So far the hypermobility hasn't hindered his sports aptitude much. He regularly kicks soccer balls into the other team's net, can ice skate slowly in a straight line and can hit a baseball. (Though I worry about his swing. We've been working on the proper "step and swing" technique, and every time I pitch the ball he does the Pennsylvania Polka with the bat and swats at my patented slow, straight ball like it's a darting horsefly. So I usually just let him rip, bad technique and all.)

Next week this very same kid goes for an eye exam. I'm too afraid to know how that goes.

Of course, we still feel blessed. Plenty of parents are spending way too many hours and days in the hospital, caring for and worrying about kids with serious illnesses. That our worst-case so far is a treatable, minor condition that may make my son a little clumsy but ultimately poses no threat to his well-being? That's a pretty good day at the doctor's office.

If you're reading this, Mimzy, we're thinking about you.