Spondylolisthesis: My Story ... Round One

Between the ages of 13 and 14 years old I began to experience pain beyond comprehension. I spent a great majority of my time pretending that my back didn't pulsate in pain, that strange shooting dagger like sensations didn't throw down my legs, and that my body hadn't come to look deformed in the trunk region, with the actual Sacrum protruding out approximately an inch from my low back. I was entering my teenage years and everyone else was fine, so why shouldn't I be? Besides, I had been to a number of doctors starting around the age of 10 or 11, all of whom said I didn't have a problem ... no cause for pain. So, it must be in my imagination, I thought ... Or rather, everyone must feel this way, right? Wrong. After playing many sports throughout my childhood, all of which I loved and enjoyed dearly, I had come to a point at the age of 12 where I could no longer take it, I simply could not run, move and interact in the same fashion that I had always known. Mind you, at this point I complained rarely, as once again, the doctors, the authority figures of my health and body, said that I was just fine. Not one made mention of a spinal deformity becoming so severe that it may ultimately take away my ability to walk, even to function and survive in the future, should there be no intervention or treatment. I didn't want to create problems ... I didn't want to be so different that my world would be flipped upside down for the rest of my life. But, I knew that there was something terribly wrong and that I had to voice my fears and concerns once more to both my parents and doctors.

On a weekday after one of my first days in high school, I was sitting in my father's living room, I gulped and sweated in silence, trying to figure out a good way to show him the ever increasing lump on my back and share the pain that I was in. I had already sporadically displayed minor amounts of discomfort in my parents' presence, especially after quitting all sports, but nothing that would truly display and outline the extreme fear, pain and uphill battle we were all about to face. I cannot recall the details, just the look on my dad's face when I lifted my shirt to show him the painful protrusion. Just like my skin appeared for that last year before my surgeries, his face went a pale grayish green and I knew the severity of the situation. I began to cry, tears flowing from my face faster then I could stop them, and I finally let go. He held me in his arms and began calling people for immediate appointments. Finally, my parents knew what I knew, and that this was no figment of my imagination, not a ploy to gain attention or get out of playing sports, as the doctors had once suggested. This was real ... extremely real. And it had to be addressed with emergency speed.

I was sent to several doctors in my city, all of whom, thankfully, referred me on to the bigger and better specialists in the Orthopedic field. I had Spondylolisthesis at a degree that was so severe it made the doctors both excited and fearful. In all actuality, due to the degree of slip, my spine was labeled with the condition Spondyloptosis, as it was beyond that of a grade 5, the most severe slip on the Spondylolisthesis grading range. My spine at the L5 had not only slipped from the vertebra below, but it had collapsed, fallen to a degree of more than 3 inches, so that the L5 was actually sitting parallel with my S1 or my Sacrum. The severity of the situation was such that a surgery, or rather, series of surgeries and procedures, must be scheduled within the next year, but preferably, the next six months.