In 2023, I was in the Alps trekking the 80-mile Tour du Mont Blanc when there came a moment I was no longer trekking, exactly. I was on my hands and knees. And then I started to cry.
Others were casually bopping past me, up and over like water around a stone. I was not always fit enough to trek 80 miles in the Alps. As a child, I was the one who always got picked last in gym class.
I would have picked me last too: by any measure, I was the most physically awkward kid in my year group. Other students bullied me and I was ashamed of my body. I felt weird, weak and sad.
Then, when I was 10, I was diagnosed with scoliosis. I also had a severe lordosis, where part of my lower spine runs almost parallel to the ground, and a condition called spondylolisthesis, where one vertebra sits noticeably out of line with the others. When I first saw the X-rays of my spine, I was stunned by the abrupt angles and unnatural twists.
At that moment, the feeling of being “weak and weird” settled in for good. Searching for answers, my parents took me to a hotshot orthopaedic surgeon in New York. He told me that the displaced vertebra was very dangerous, and with any fall or bump, it could slip forward, sever my spinal cord and leave me paralysed.
Then he said I needed a big operation to chisel enough bone from my thigh to fuse together seven vertebrae in my lower back. I would be in a body cast for a year. The surgery was scheduled.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
