scoliosis – The Fused Mama

Just Breathe.

September 7, 2019September 7, 2019 Heather Meyers

Breath

The beginning of a life

and the end is marked

by its presence or absence

–Heather Meyers

Trees are a visual reminder that we need to fill our lungs fully with breath to hold up.

Breath is the most basic function in life. Ironically, though basic, it is at times, the one thing that helps us get through certain moments in our lives.

When I woke from my spinal fusion surgery to correct my scoliosis, I woke from the strangest dream I had ever had. I was dreaming that I was Cinderella and that my step-sisters were putting me into a corset and turning a dial to make me taller and taller. It was so incredibly painful that I was gasping and trying to cry out in desperation for them to stop but I couldn’t speak; however, they just laughed and scoffed at me that now I would be too tall for the prince. (I kind of blame this particular dream on my request to listen to Mozart continually on a CD during my surgery. Though in all honesty, I wonder if that also had something to do with the level of success that the surgeon had in my amount of correction. My Doctor had been enthusiastic and pleased that I was the first patient he had been able to get that close to straight with my degree of curvature…but I digress.)

Once I became conscious and the room was still black to me, which is always how it has been after I’ve been under general anesthesia, I became aware that my husband and my mother were leaning over me with pieces of ice in their hands gently rubbing my face with the cold chunks. I had been laying on my face for over 14 hours with tubing down my throat and in my nose and my face was swollen beyond recognition from the pressure. I felt absolutely dreadful and wanted to cry but my throat was so raw and dry that making sound was unpleasant too. The worst of it was that every single breath was like being on a rack with screws pulling at my muscles and the pain was a sort of indescribable torture.

As my vision returned, my parents and husband briefed me about my surgery and how successful it had been. I was told that my surgeon had felt that this was an extraordinarily successful surgery and that, so as not to mess anything up, I was not to move a muscle until someone taught me how to properly get out of bed. So, by now, because this was my second surgery and those had been my orders three days prior with my first surgery, I hadn’t moved for four days. Oh, and by the way, the surgeon had decided that breaking some of my ribs would help him get better correction so the pain when I breathed might be partially attributed to that. I also had had to have 14 units of blood, 7 units of platelets and 2 of plasma.

I’m not sure how long my family was with me after I had finally come to, but it did not feel long when a nurse came in and commented that visiting hours for the ICU were almost over. I felt helpless, stuck and abandoned.

The nurse invited everyone to leave and explained again that I better not move a muscle. I couldn’t eat or drink anything and that I could only have 30 ml’s of ice an hour (which is about 2 tablespoons). To someone who had such a swollen esophagus, this sounded like a punishment. She left and I was left to stare at the clock in my room for the hour and slowly ration my 30 ml’s of ice.

This night is filed in my memory as “the night I breathed”. I was in so much pain that breathing itself felt like torture. Even the idea of sleeping was impossible because just the act of breathing took so much effort. The nurse would come in on the hour and get me more ice chips or throw out what I hadn’t finished and tell me to just sleep and I would gasp that if I could sleep I would, but I needed to focus on my breath.

I know that I had the thought run through my mind that if I could survive that night there was nothing I couldn’t survive. The mantra running through my mind was “Just Breathe”.

Thankfully, as time passed, the pain lessened as my body healed. Twelve days after I was admitted, I was able to leave the hospital. After twelve days of primarily seeing white walls and windows with a view of another window of the hospital, I was itching to get outside.

I had gone into the hospital on March 25, 2004 and was released on April 6, 2004. I had gone into the hospital at a time of year, in Utah, where everything was grey and cold. It was that in-between time of year when you are caught between winter and spring and it’s just ugly outside.

As I was pushed out of the hospital in a wheelchair, my senses were heightened to a degree that it’s difficult to explain, and I noticed details that I normally would have passed by; the textured pebbly walk-way of the hospital entrance, the glass sliding doors tinged with green.

My parents drove up in their champagne colored Camry and I was eased out of the wheelchair by my husband and into the car. As the car pulled passed the hospital, I realized that the world around me was bursting with pink blossoms.

Everywhere I looked, it was colorful and blooming. My breath caught in my throat and I burst into tears. It was so glorious to see so much color.

I don’t know if it was just that particular year, but to me, that spring stands out as the most beautiful spring I have witnessed. Possibly, it was because I had been in such a sterile looking environment that the contrast made it seem like such a brilliant spring. Maybe every spring was like that and I had never appreciated it fully because I was too caught up in regular life to notice. Either way, as I re-learned to walk and move in my body that now was two and a half inches taller and contained about seven and a half pounds of newly-acquired titanium rods from S1 to T3. I became much more aware of the beauty that surrounded me. Perhaps, it was because I had survived something that had been so painful that my appreciation for the beauty of the world around me increased. Maybe it’s because when we come through a dark night of pain and suffering, the bright days with beauty surrounding us become more breath-taking.

Breath has become a tool that I use daily to increase my quality of life. It seems so simplistic but one thing we can control (when we are healthy and do not have medical issues) is our breathing and the rhythm of our breath.

When my music students and I discuss what skills to use when we are afraid or nervous about an upcoming performance, breathing is the number one skill I teach. We talk about when you feel that nervous butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling or the uptight feeling as our body tenses from the fight or flight response, that it is breathing that can help us the most.

This is the technique I teach:

Practice breathing out for one count and in for one count, then out for two—in for two, out for three—in for three, out for four—in for four…etc. until you reach 7 or ten counts and feel your pulse respond to the relaxing amount of oxygen that is flowing in your veins.

I actually have used this technique to put myself to sleep because it can be so relaxing. It is also a form of meditation that doesn’t take a lot of preparation and can be done on the fly when you need to calm down. I’ve literally done this breathing technique minutes before I was going up to perform and it has really helped me. If you can remember to do it when you are having a difficult time with anything, it can help you slow down and get a handle on the situation—at least mentally because it slows you down into mindfulness. When we are breathing quickly and our pulse is racing, it is difficult for our brains to focus on anything. Using breath as a tool really helps to help the mind re-engage in the moment and the task at hand.

It’s maybe silly, but I used this technique this summer when my two-year-old was taking survival swim classes even though it was with a certified, amazing instructor. It was nerve wracking at first to see my daughter put her head under the water and struggle to get to the edge of the pool and pull herself up. So, I really did have to breathe through it at first as the instructor and I worked with her to teach her to swim. At the same age, my oldest had fallen in the deep end at a very crowded neighborhood swimming pool. Thankfully, I saw the top of his head and dove in and got him seconds after he fell in so he hadn’t tried to take a breath yet. I still feel my chest tighten when I think about that experience with my sweet baby boy. I put my youngest in these classes to avoid that same situation but it still made my heart clinch a little in my chest when I would see her in the water—even in that controlled situation. Being able to breathe through heavy feelings really is invaluable.

My little fishy on the beach this past June

Now when I see my little two-year-old swim like a little fishy, I am more taken aback with how incredible it is that little tiny humans can learn to swim. I’m more exhilarated by the skills she has and I find my chest catch with pride as she happily jumps out of the water declaring that she’s a fish!

Do you have any breathing techniques that you use to help you throughout your days? If not, I encourage you to give this simple technique a try. It’s a good tool to keep in your back pocket for when you need a little extra assistance getting through tough moments. Breathe through the tough times so that when you are through with them, you can be mindful of the magnificent moments that take your breath away.

Some of My Back Story

August 12, 2019August 17, 2019 Heather Meyers

When I was about twelve years old, my mom started visiting this small little herb shop just out of curiosity. It was run by a woman who was also a chiropractor. Once in a while my mom would go into the shop and pick up loose herbs for tea and chat with the herbalist chiropractor. Pretty soon they became good friends. At one point, my mom had her friend check me because I had mentioned my back and hips were hurting.

The herbalist checked my spine and told my mom to go to my pediatrician and get X-rays done to see if I had scoliosis.

Shortly afterwards we went to the pediatrician and he commented that if I did it must not be bad but he’d send me to imaging. So I went up the stairs to imaging with my mom, put on an embarrassing blue hospital gown in a stall and walked over to a tiny room and had X-rays done on my spine.

Maybe a month later, I asked my mom if she had ever heard anything back from the doctor. She hadn’t. So, she called the doctors office to inquire about my X-rays. She got a call back that it wasn’t significant and not to worry.

By the time I was 15 I had to run for P.E. every other day and my back and right hip would just ache like crazy when I did. Every step I took felt like my right hip was being rubbed raw. I complained to my mom about it. She felt like the pediatrician we had at the time kept blowing us off when we’d ask him about things, so we decided to try a chiropractor that had been referred to us by a friend.

When we went into the chiropractor and had my X-rays done, he was very stern about how bad my scoliosis was.

He told me that I would probably suffocate to death if I ever got pregnant and tried having kids. He wanted me to lose weight to take some pressure off of my spine, which I thought at the time was probably impossible (something I had done since I was age ten or eleven was diet because I hated how my body looked). It was a pretty depressing prognoses. He suggested coming in a few times a week to see if he could help my back.

I came in two or three days a week after school and the chiropractor would pop my back with his giant hands and then leave me with I’m guessing a tens unit attached to my back for a while and leave the room.

I don’t really know if any of those visits helped or hindered because I don’t remember any significant changes at all. I wished I had known then that not all chiropractors are the same and that there are many different approaches to what chiropractors do so possibly if I had shopped around I could have gotten some different treatments than I did.

After a while, I believe my mom and I just decided to kind of ignore my back or try not to think about it any more.

I was very worried about my weight because I couldn’t stand the way I looked in clothes. I remember wishing that it was jacket weather all year round so I could hide in a jacket constantly. I had strange uneven rolls of fat on my back that wouldn’t seem to budge no matter how hard I worked out. I would call the ones on my waist “my chunkies” and the ones that hung off of my shoulder blades “my wings”. I’d laugh and make fun of them sometimes to people I knew because I wanted people to know I wasn’t blind to how I looked but I was incredibly disgusted by my body.

More than anything, I wanted to hide.

One thing I was blessed with in high school, was I had friends who were really amazing loving people. I had a few different groups that I hung out with and no one ever was cruel and mean to me about how I looked or my obvious deformities. They all loved me for and sometimes despite the person I was. I have been so grateful for them.

I would work out as hard as I knew how to back then and try to eat how I had been told to eat in order to get in better shape.

I weight trained, ran almost daily for a few miles, then I would do aerobics or kick boxing videos. Just as I was instructed by the magazines I bought, I ate a piece of whole grain toast with a banana every morning for breakfast, a whole wheat sandwich of pb&j or meat lettuce and no mayo with grapes or an orange for lunch, and for dinner I’d eat what I felt like was a small portion of what my mom served as long as it was ‘low fat’ like pasta with a little tomato juice mixed in, or a baked potato and a tiny portion of lean meatloaf. I was learning the rules that all the magazines with the gorgeous, skinny models on the front were telling me to do and I was gaining even more weight when I was “good” and followed their advice. It was discouraging to say the least.

(Thankfully, someone explained carbs to me at some point so I learned how to slim down a bit from eating less of them. I just wish I could have explained food to my high school self. If I could go back in time and tell myself something, I think that’s what I’d talk to myself about. It wasn’t my fault that I’d received false information about how foods worked. That low fat does not equal healthy.)

Fast forward to when I was in college and I was blessed with new good friends who were studying the same things I was. One of those girls and I went on a double blind date with two cute guys.

Her date had the prettiest blue eyes I had ever seen. In a interesting turn of events, he was interested in me. He and I ended up dating after a bit and falling in love.

He knew from pretty much the beginning of our friendship that I had scoliosis and he’s always been very accepting of me. He knew that with my back the way it was, I may not be able to have kids and he always let me lead the way and make my own decisions about things that involved my own body. I love this guy. I tell you, he’s the best.

We ended up getting married and about six months after we did, I stretched a little funny and felt a pop and it turns out I ‘slipped’ a disk in my back that was already severely out of balance. Basically I created a spondilosthesis at my S1 vertebrae.

I was in excruciating pain. I had my husband drive me home that night and every bump was horrifyingly painful. It was awful. I laid on my stomach that night and could not move without cringing in agony.

Thankfully, with a little rest, things got a little better and I was able to go to a family doctor. She gave me a list of surgeon’s names to contact and a handicap parking tag because walking far was absolute torture for my back.

We went through the list and out of all of the surgeons on the list, some of whom were pediatric and others who were for an adult population. Only one would see me. The pediatric surgeons said I was too old and to find an adult doctor and the adult doctors said I was too young and to find a pediatric one.

As luck would have it, my husband, who was working at a car parts shop at the time, was at work one day and got the name of one of the surgeons in the area who had just performed back surgery on one of the people who came into the shop. We called right away and his was the first office who didn’t turn my case away from the get-go. However, just to get an appointment, I was on a wait list for two months.

While I waited those two months for an appointment, I dealt daily with the excruciating pain that my back was in. I also could hardly breath. When I would take a shower the steam alone would fill my lungs so much that I felt like I was being suffocated and I would end up hyperventilating and completely terrified if I took too long of a shower. I also had difficulty sleeping at night because I felt like my lungs were being crushed so I had to prop pillows around myself to feel like I was getting enough air.

Once my surgeon saw me and my situation he was very quiet and obviously upset. I had told him about my past history and how the pediatrician had not found it to be serious enough to send me to a specialist at age 12. He started having me bank my own blood for three months before my surgery as well as get an MRI, a CT scan and a pulmonary function test.

It was the pulmonary test that really proved how dire a situation I was in. My lung capacity was at 50% so basically I was like a person climbing Mount Everest daily because it was like I was being crushed by my own body.

When I had my surgeries it was in March of 2004. In my surgeries my spine was fused and the surgeon added rods, screws and four levels of metal cages all weighing about 7 lbs of titanium from S1-T3. I was in the hospital for twelve days and at the end of my stay, it was determined that I should stay at my mom’s house in a hospital bed until I got stronger.

It took me two months to gain back enough strength to live in my own apartment again. I literally had to relearn how to walk and move around. I had spent so much time lying flat in a hospital bed my muscles in my whole body had atrophied tremendously. I was very weak. I did all I could to gain back my strength as much as possible but I was only allowed to walk three miles a day which I did with the intent to heal quickly.

After a year post-surgery, my surgeon gave me the go ahead to have children or do what I wanted to do within certain guidelines. I was shocked and excited he felt I was strong enough to deal with those kinds of things–especially after thinking for the last six to seven years that I could never possibly have children safely.

In regards to giving birth, because my fusion is from S1-T3, I can not have an epidural (there’s no way to get into the epidural space). If for some reason I need to have a surgical birth, I would have to be put under a general anesthetic. Thankfully, 14 years later I’ve had four children vaginally, without an epidural. I may post my birth stories here if the mood strikes me. I’ve learned a lot about myself, life, birth and loss since my spinal fusion. I’ve gone back and forth a LOT about sharing my story and my insights because I’m a pretty private person. However, as I continue through my life and hear of others who are struggling with trials, some of them similar to mine, I think: “If I shared my story, could I help someone?” I don’t think I’m an amazing, remarkable person who has pain that is worse, or story or insights that are better or more relevant than someone else’s. I do feel that if I can help others by sharing, then I’m being selfish for not sharing. So welcome to my blog. Hopefully it will be a source of information and hopefully light in your life.