Help Lexy Overcome Neck Injury, Scoliosis & Lordosis
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First, I just want to say, if you choose to donate, you have no idea how much it means to me. Thank you so much.
My neck and the rest of my spine has remained relatively untreated throughout my childhood, progressively getting worse and worse over time, until I took it upon myself to start trying to pay for it as an adult in 2021. For now, I must choose between my health and getting my own place. I can't have both. I choose my health. I appreciate all the support I can get.
My Backstory: I unfortunately went through a lot of childhood trauma and physical abuse from my mom, and emotional and verbal abuse from my mom's siblings, and my mom's mom... a lot of punches, kicks and stomps to my privates, my neck, my back, my head, and my spine in general, strangling me, picking me up by my neck, throwing me by my hair, dragging me by my hair, banging my head on sharp corners of furniture, malnourishment, spitting in my face, calling me worthless and nothing, looking at me with disgust since I was a very young child, just very unloved in general while I watched everyone else get loved, and more. My mom and her siblings did a lot of gaslighting as well, saying that I'm just a crazy person who makes this all up and who needs mental help. All my healthy younger siblings receive birthday money from my mom's side of the family. I never get birthday money, not even for the sake of my condition. My mom's side of the family don't even bother calling me to wish me a happy birthday. They don't ever bother calling me, period. They never answer my calls but they answer my mom's calls and request to speak to my siblings. I finally gave up on calling them 12 years ago. I guess it's because they love my main abuser and I spoke up on what was going on. I don't know. When I was little, I cried during my severe migraines and I had the inability to straighten my head since I was 6 years old. They told me I'm a liar and children don't get headaches. My severe back pain started since I was 10 and I was feeling unevenness in my step since I was 12. I now know, or the doctors suspect, that my condition actually stemmed from a neck injury of unknown cause, which they said was very old and untreated. My neck being stuck slanted like that created an unevenness that transformed my whole spine, starting with the shoulder blade level first, and hip level second. It definitely was not hereditary since none of my siblings, parents, parents' siblings, grandparents, great grandparents, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th cousins or their children or parents have it. That is over 300 family members. It is literally just only me, so I feel that it had to have been from one of the MANY times my mom hurt my neck. I was insisting since I was 10 that what I was feeling wasn't normal. It was making me cry after I had learned to no longer cry anymore for many years, so this pain was something very severe, to make me cry like that, but my mom didn't want to take me to see any doctor for it. I am guessing it was to protect herself from suspicion? And throughout my childhood I got dismissed by my family and got called a liar and an attention seeker. They gaslit me that I've never been abused and I'm crazy, they brushed everything under the rug, refusing to have these things get checked, and when it got discovered by the school nurses when I started high school at 13 that something was wrong with my spine, it barely got treated. Just two $300 braces that I grew out of almost immediately and that's it. No replacement for it after I've grown. Got purple sides and sciatica and spine got way worse by still wearing it when it didn't even fit me anymore. No research. Just the bare minimum so they could say that they did do something. My parents had the money to treat me a lot more at the time but they did not want to sacrifice the nice car, didn't want to downgrade from the several million dollar home, they ended up losing it anyway with the economy affecting what they did for a living, but after this they went on trips all over the world with all my siblings and cousins and their girlfriends and boyfriends without telling me about these trips beforehand, so that I can't prepare to come along... without taking me with them, and without helping me afford my back treatments... The lack of treatment for so long made it get so much worse over time. The treatments could've been a lot less expensive and a lot more lasting if I was treated back when it was mild as a teenager. This frustrates and infuriates me. I am trying so hard to turn my life around after having such a bad start at life, but my condition causes a lot of other health issues like throwing up, severe migraines and having sudden knife pains in my spine to where I drop... Sometimes can't even move. I call in sick or get sent home from work. Please help me turn my life around for the better.
Info about my spine: My x-rays show signs of ligament damage in my neck at the C2-C3 & C3-C4 spinal levels, and more damage at C4-C5, C5-C6, C6-C7 and C7-T1 spinal levels, and my neck has a shifted atlas off its axis at C2. I also have a moderate-to-severe 41.4 degree S curve, and I have mild lordosis. I’m currently trying to give scoliosis reduction treatments my all. If it gets any worse, I will have no choice but to get surgery to deal with the breathing and heart problems it causes, to stop the spine from twisting more, and to stop the pain, but it would come at a cost... Surgery costs a whole lot more than other spinal correction methods, and it causes a loss of back flexibility for life. I hope it never comes down to this. I really love swimming, yoga, pilates, and the kind of gymnastics that's high flexibility/low impact. My doctors advised me to keep on doing it, as these activities are actually very good for people with scoliosis. It helps improve flexibility & mobility in a condition where there normally wouldn't be much of that, it helps with pain management, and the overall health of the spine. Having to lose these things that I love due to needing surgery would break my heart, so I'm trying to afford to go to this scoliosis reduction center in my state so that hopefully surgery will never be an option.
Scoliosis causes these other problems in the body:
- It interferes with signals from our nervous system. When our spine curves abnormally to one side, it compresses nerves along the inner curves and stretches them along the outer curves. As a result, our nerves struggle to conduct important signals regarding sensation to and from our extremities. Scoliosis disrupts signals from the body to the brain which causes everything in the body to not function optimally.
- We experience icy-hot sensations, pins and needles sensations, and tingling sensations in our arms or legs. We get radiating pain known as radiculopathy. (I experience this.)
- Aside from tingling pain, radiculopathy can affect both fine and gross motor control. (Fine motor control involves using small muscles to complete intricate tasks like snapping Legos together. In contrast, gross motor control involves recruiting our large muscle groups to complete big-movement tasks like jogging.) (I did feel more awkward and disjointed in doing gross motor tasks when my scoliosis started developing, but I haven't noticed any compromise in my fine motor skill. I am so grateful for that.)
- In severe cases, radiculopathy can also affect the nerves that control our bowels and bladder, resulting in incontinence. (I don’t have this one, thank goodness, but that could always change. Update 11/1/2024 - I just started experiencing this one too.)
- It results in really painful muscular imbalances. (I suffer from this.)
- It prevents CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) from recirculating to your brain.
- Muscular imbalances result in tension headaches and then the way scoliosis prevents recirculation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to the brain reduces the levels of CSF in the brain, intensifying that simple tension headache, and turning it into a full-blown migraine. (I experience this one. I get severe migraines when I’m not being treated. Those migraines started when I was 6 years old.)
- It interrupts our digestive processes. When a spine deviates from its normal position, it takes up prime real estate that would otherwise be reserved for our organs. The esophagus, stomach, and intestines suffer the consequences. (I have this one pretty badly.)
- In individuals with severe scoliosis, the facial muscles that enable chewing can suffer dysfunction. Likewise, the abnormal curvature of the neck can constrict the esophagus, making it difficult to swallow. (I’ve experienced things like this before treatments along with shooting knife pains in my neck when I’m chewing, but after some treatments I’m okay.)
- Compression of the stomach and intestines due to scoliosis can result in failure to adequately absorb essential nutrients, painful build-up of stomach acid, resulting in acid reflux and nausea, feeling full before your nutritional needs are met, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), constipation, and weight loss (to a dangerous degree). (This one is my very worst one. I’ve almost died in the past from this one. Also costed me jobs.)
- It compromises the female reproductive system. (To my knowledge, I don’t have this problem.)
- It reduces our cardiac output and respiratory capacity. Scoliosis can interfere with our ability to take full, deep breaths. This is especially true for individuals who have severe scoliosis curves measuring more than 80 degrees. Internally, the rib cage cannot expand fully enough to deliver an adequate oxygen supply to the lungs. As a result, an individual may feel chronically short of breath. (Yes… It is awful. I’m so short of breath, in the shower, after I eat, or when I try bending, and I often end up fainting, getting lightheaded, losing balance, etc.)
- Similarly, severe scoliosis can reduce our cardiac output. Just as the lungs require room to expand, the heart also requires space to beat. More often, this causes the heart to work harder than is strictly necessary and results in mitral valve prolapse. In the most severe cases, this can lead to premature heart failure.
Organizer
Alexis Sooklall
Organizer
West Palm Beach, FL