Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are not asking for donations- We just wanted to keep family and friends updated on Christian’s progress. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement.
In August of 2017 when Christian was getting his sports physical for school, he bent over to touch his toes and his doctor said, "You have advanced scoliosis and you need to make an appointment to have surgery." We were completely shocked to say the least. He visited an orthopedic surgeon at Cardinal Glennon and we were told that his curve was at 49% and he definitely needed surgery sometime in the next year or so. We were kind of in denial and could not understand why he needed surgery so quickly when he did not have any pain and it didn't really look that bad at the time.
After doing some research I learned about a surgery called Spinal Tethering which is much less invasive that the spinal fusion surgery. I found a doctor in St Louis that performed this surgery and we were able to get an appointment with him on September 2nd at Shriner's Hospital. Unfortunately, Christian was not a candidate for this procedure because he has scoliosis with kyphosis- that means he has multiple curves.
His curve had advanced to 53 degrees on top and 75 degree on the bottom in 4 months, so we had schedule the spinal fusion surgery ASAP. The surgery is scheduled for October 29th at Shriner's Hospital in St. Louis. We were told that he would be hospitalized for 4 days and he would not be released to go back to school for 6 weeks.
