I have to start a blog for this venture.

Yeah, so what that the surgery isn't going to happen until the fall of next year, I might as well blog about it now, what better stuff do I have to do?





First off, I must tell you a little about me. I am Staci, I am 27, I am married and I have two gorgeous daughters. I live in Texas, I stay at home with my kids, and I have an awesome family. I love to read, and listen to music, watch movies and I love to laugh...I guess you can say that I am pretty easy to entertain, as I will laugh at the drop of a hat. I am a Christian, but a very bad one. I don't live like I should and all that. I am so not worthy of God's love, but I know He still loves me, even when I turn my back on Him. I am working on that though.





The reason for this blog and the adventure that will be recorded about? I have scoliosis. Not just a little curve that causes a little discomfort. No, I have full blown, severe, scary looking scoliosis. My spine is the shape of an "S". Umm, anyone knows your spine is supposed to be straight up and down. Well, not mine! Mine is all messed up and contorted and just ugh. Yeah, its pretty bad. I have two curves, the top one measures 65 degrees, the bottom one measures 63 degrees.



I found out I had this *ahem* distortion when I was 13. I was mowing the yard, and my back was killing me. My dad offered to rub my back for me. That's when he noticed I had a hump on my right side. My parents were actually quite concerned, seeing this mass on my back, you know? They thought the worse. A tumor.



I went to the doctor the next day and they told us it was scoliosis and referred me to an orthopedist surgeon here in Odessa. They did x-rays and I still remember my stomach flip-flopping when I saw my spine. I mean, I know its supposed to be straight up and down, and here mine was looking that way. The surgeon was like, "Well, we don't handle severe cases here, we have to send you to Dallas to an expert in this area." So off we go to the Cook Ft. Worth Childrens Hospital, to see Dr. James Roach. My curves at that time, were measuring 34 degrees on top, 30 degrees on bottom. He felt that since I had already had my period for a year, that I would stop growing, therefore the curves wouldn't progress. Boy was he wrong?!

I have always had pain and discomfort, but it just kept getting a little worse as time wore on. In July of 2005, my aunt, who was a pharmacy tech, mentioned that maybe I could take pain pills to help me ease the pain. I was so ashamed to take pain pills because you know, people think that people who take pain pills are just taking them for the "high" that they give you. Especially someone like me, you can't "see" what is wrong with me, I "look" healthy, so why am *I* taking pills? Anyways, so I went and got on them. They helped tremendously and still do. I since then have been transferred to a pain management doctor, and the first words he said when he saw me was, "You are too young to be in here". So that didn't help my nervousness...that is until I explained my story and he saw my back and stuff, and he has been so helpful in controlling my pain. I take Lortab and Xanaflex, a muscle relaxer.

So here I am today...I have a wonderful husband and two gorgeous baby girls. Kaci is my clone I guess you can say, she will be 6 on June 14th, and Lanie will be 18 months old in June. They definitely keep me going, all day, everyday. My pain has progressively gotten worse, where there are some days that I feel like if I have to take one more step or do one more thing, that I will just collapse in pain. The pills help me somewhat get a good nights sleep and when I wake up, I am so stiff and I have to literally push myself up with my arms...No popping out of bed for this Mama :) But things are looking up for me, and I will get to that part....