Spinal Surgery & Prolapsed Rectum: Severe Scoliosis

“Guys like curves” my mom joked as I cried in the doctor’s office at 13 years old. I was diagnosed with scoliosis at 10 but this was the first time the word “severe” was tacked on. I had just found out that I needed to start wearing a back brace. My case was structural, idiopathic scoliosis which means that I had an irreversible curve in my spine with an unknown cause. If I was lucky, the brace would stabilize the curve at the manageable, yet still uncomfortable, 32-degree curve. I was not lucky.

If you have ever experienced chronic back pain, then you know that it becomes the centre of everything you do. There is not a moment that you can ever be truly comfortable. Especially when you are told to wear a back brace for 23 hours out of a day.

When the brace did not work, and the pain became intolerable, I had to take the chance that spinal fusion would increase my quality of life. Spinal fusion is essentially a welding process where the surgeons would disentangle muscle from spine, move the spine into the correct position, and then fuse the vertebrae in place using titanium rods and screws. This already daunting decision was made even tougher since my brother underwent the same surgery and died shortly after.

My household was no stranger to medical crises. We had already dealt with a prolapsed a**-hole, seizures, and multiple hospitalizations. Illness followed me throughout life but just like Sickboy teaches us, there is always a reason to laugh.

- Ronnie