Where is shriners hospital

She cried and it was the first time that she's cried about her scoliosis. It makes me cry even when I think about it because she worked so hard at it.

She wore that brace 23 hours a day for two years and never complained. Dusty and I knew that we needed to do something different because we did not really want our daughter at 12 years old to have fusion, and she was looking like she was going to have to have it. My wife was really the one that started doing a lot of the research, looking on Facebook and trying to find a support group, and she found a group for VBT. I'd never even heard of it before.

I got on there and I just put Sydney story in, like, "This is her age, this is what her curve is. He said, "At Shriners you don't have to worry about anything. You just need to go. Local Shriners will help you get there. I had read that this vertebral body tethering was not FDA approved and so I just tried to research as best that I can. Within a few days I had the x-rays and I had them mailed to Shriners and Dr.

Hwang said, "We'd like to see you in person," and so we scheduled our trip to Shriners. I remember the first time I went to Shriners in Philadelphia. I was nervous, but they just looked at me and just immediately started to care about me and who I was personally, on a personal level that you don't see in very many places. Hwang was fantastic. I mean, he answered all my questions, really gave me a sense that the doctor's and the team there, it's not really just the doctors, it's the nursing staff, it's the whole team, everybody, they really know what they're doing, they really take care of the patient.

Then there was also a sense that it wasn't just like we were going to go there and be a patient of Shiners for the time of the surgery and then afterwards we go home and we're left on our own. I really got a sense that Sydney would continue to be under the care Shiners for a long period of time and that they were going to continue to monitor her care and her wellbeing over her lifetime.

Hwang said she was a candidate. He said, "You can do it or not, it's up to you. She can continue bracing, but she's a perfect candidate at this time. Shriners was leading the charge. We knew they were the best of the best. We weren't as concerned about the FDA approval, but we knew that they were leading the charge and that they had done several of these and we had seen results from other kids.

Essentially, with scoliosis, it's basically a curvature of the spine. You have a rotation component.

What we see on the x-rays and what families often see is this curve on the x-ray of the spine. Ultimately, we want to straighten the spine so it doesn't get worse and then provide the best correction we can to children. With the VBT, the vertebral body tether, the theory is that you can actually correct the scoliosis and use their growth to help improve the correction.

What we tend to do is, through the chest cavity, we make smaller incisions and put a screw into the vertebral body, which is the bigger part of the spine, and put an anchor that tethers kind of a rope that has a little bit of tension on it.

That allows us to apply a force on one side of the spine, so we compress one side and then the other side can differentially grow. It slows down growth a little bit on one side, allowing the child's growth to help correct the curve over time as well. Ideally, hypothetically, we think that'll preserve motion, hopefully distribute the stress of the spine so not any single level has more stress, and maybe long-term avoid more issues with degeneration and pain.

With the scoliosis, say, for example, with the curvature of the spine, it affects the pulmonary function and in severe cases can affect other organ structures, and so really we want to maintain as straight a spine as we can and allow for growth and respiratory and lung development. It's a unique environment.

I think for the VBT, that's a perfect example where there's very few places that you would ever be able to develop this and pioneer this technology and advance it the way that Dr. Here, really their focus was on the children, that partnership, and that's the way this whole technology came about. It was pretty amazing. We were in the prep room with Sydney. It's a surreal moment. We held Sydney's hand, I think we were all being brave for each other, and then they wheel her off and closed the doors.

I think my wife and I, it was just an emotional release. Sydney hasn't worn a brace since that. She's able to do everything physically that she wants to do. She had a very good experience with her surgery, there were no complications or no issues.

Her recovery was way better than what I was expecting, in terms of her speed of recovery. I think a lot of that is due in part to the surgery itself. I mean, the procedure that the doctors have come up with for this vertebral body tethering is really incredible. When you play oboe, you have to use a lot of air.

It is such a tiny instrument, but each note is so different and it sounds completely different. You have to use all your lungs, all the air in your lungs.

She had her surgery in February and she went back to school six weeks later, but she was playing her oboe, practicing, within three to four weeks. She even came to me and she was like, "I can breathe. Now, she can breathe fully. I love that my kids are in music now. Evan plays guitar, and he's also in percussion in seventh grade in the band. Sydney, of course, is in the band and she plays oboe and the saxophone. We've got a lot of musical influence our family. She is a fabulous oboe player, but not only that, she has to double on a marching band instrument as well in the fall, on saxophone.

She actually doubles in the fall semester when we run around the field. She's a fabulous both a player, human being for that matter, and just a really talented musician. She's an incredible role model. She works with other kids very well, like you asked a while ago. It would be nice to have 50 of her. I would be very happy with 50 of Sydneys. That would be awesome, it really would.

She's an awesome child. Band is my favorite subject because it's something that I get to do with my friends and I get to involve my family in. I learned how to be more outgoing and to problem solve. I know it sounds weird to say that about band, but band really is every subject in one. My brother and my dad, they love to play drums and guitar together. I'll go in there sometimes my saxophone and just play whatever I feel like is fitting.

It's really cool because afterwards, after you're done playing, you're just like, "That was cool," that we were all able to come together and to make music.

Again, it's really special to me, just because of the emotion behind it and how meaningful it is for people. When I think of Sydney, I would describe her as compassionate. She is a natural leader and I see that play out in the youth group. During my surgery, my church group was so supportive. My pastor, he would come to me and he was like, "If there's anything that I can do for you, just let me know.

I wanted to shout to the world about the care that we received at Shriners, so we found Curvy Girls and we support over 30 members now, we have over 30 members in our group. We run two groups, one in Tulsa and one in Oklahoma City. My support group has helped me as a person in so many incredible ways. I am a lot more confident in myself and I've learned how to be a good listener. I have a best friend, her name is Katie.

She actually lives right across the street from me, we've been best friends since second grade. Over the years, it's gotten to be a very, very strong friendship. I would definitely say she's an inspiration to me because she's had to deal with so much in her life, of just all the struggles of getting through scoliosis, and throughout the whole experience she's been positive, she's been looking forward and she's had a good attitude about everything.

She'd be a great national patient ambassador, because like I said, she is very giving, very kind, she cares about others. She wears her heart on her sleeve, she's very emotional.

You can see just how willing to help others that she is. I'll call her the best sister of all time, just because she's just been there for me. She helped me out in situations I didn't know how to get out of, she helped me with school work, she's just always been there for me. She surprises me a lot, Sydney does, how kind she is to other people.

When kids are teenagers, they're not always so kind, but Sydney, she takes that person in. Then the support that she gives to the girls in the scoliosis group, I mean, she does that outside of just the one time we meet a month. I'm proud of her in a lot of different ways. I'm proud of her because she's strong. I can see that she's a lot stronger than she thinks she is sometimes, but she does push herself.

She has incredible work ethic, and I see that in how she does her schoolwork. The hardest that I had to go through mentally was scoliosis. Again, it was hard because I just felt so alone and confused. Obviously, you're like, "Why does this happen? How did this even happen? Did I do something wrong? I was disappointed in myself, I felt like I didn't do enough.

Going through that disappointment and learning that none of that was my fault and I did my best, working through that was probably the most difficult part of my journey. I think Shriners Hospital care is unique because I just don't think they realize what an impact they've made on my life. They've given me the opportunity to move on from my journey.

All the things I've learned and all the hardships, I can take that now and help someone else. I get the opportunity to say, "Okay, that chapter in my life is done. What can I do now to help others that are going through the same thing that I went through? I'm so thankful that I have scoliosis, because my family is closer than ever and I have amazing friends that are always there to support me.

When I get older, I want people to know me as someone who always looked on the positive side and was always there to put a smile on someone's face, no matter how I felt or how bad my day was and just not letting that reflect on other people, just letting them know that everything's going to be okay and there's always a positive outcome of something, even if it's hard.

If I had to describe Seth in three words, I think he's thoughtful, I think he's funny, and he's awesome. He's unique in that he's a very hard worker, he's very driven, he's very fun to be with. Seth, in my eyes, is a very humble individual.

He has a confidence that he can figure things out for himself, and I really admire that about him. He's got a good social life, his grades are doing great and he's working hard at his sport.

Fort Wayne is a small city in northeastern Indiana with a population of probably ,, but in the outskirts, and Vicki and I have lived our whole lives here. We were high school sweethearts, got married, and four years later, started a family.

From the time he was born, Seth was never really a complainer. He never asked for anything, he was just easy laid back. He's always been that way, even now as a young teenager. He had his sports physical in the summer and the doctor noticed that he had some curvature, had some rotation in his spine. He just commented that this is something we just need to keep an eye on. I didn't think anything of it, no one in our family has scoliosis, so just put it on the back burner and didn't think about it.

Then it was probably some time, a year or so later, when we noticed him walking around the house without a shirt on, that something didn't look right, the curvature of his back, the shoulder blade being distorted. At that point, we had a family friend of ours who was a chiropractor, and we took Seth to see her and take a look at it. She took us right away into her office and took an x-ray. I think at that time, he might've been in the low 30s, his degree, it's a thoracic curve only, and we began treatments with her.

It was very painful and my rotation, flexibility, weren't very good at all. It got to the point where I would sit out some recesses because of back pain because I just couldn't do it, couldn't go out there and play with my friends, which was really hard on me.

I was doing exercises that my chiropractor was recommending for me, which did seem to slow down my curvature's growth, but it ultimately wasn't going to stop it. It seemed that there was only one way to help me, and that was through surgery. She had referred us to another set of doctors, and then we had made an appointment with them. It was through that set of doctors that we learned of a Facebook group that was a support for parents with children with scoliosis.

Then it was through this Facebook group that we learned about Shriners. But we always had a fear of how is this going to affect his life, his development, how's he going to be able to participate in the youth sports that he so much loved to do. Not only that, but just his growth as a young child. We had heard that Shriners had a guideline, they had parameters that the child had to meet for them to do the surgery because they were involved with the FDA and this study.

We were hopeful that Seth could meet those parameters, we thought that he did fit into that window. The more we read about VBT, we saw that this was the solution for Seth. It was the only solution that we could get behind.

This is a non-invasive surgery, it was not the fusion that everyone had talked about in the past as a solution for scoliosis. Scoliosis is an abnormal curvature of the spine. There's a number of reasons it can arise, from the congenital, which is you may have abnormal bones or the bones may be stuck together that causes that curvature, or there's some sort of neurologic issue in the spinal cord that can cause it. The most common that we see as the idiopathic scoliosis in the adolescent population, where it's diagnosed above the age of The majority of those patients are actually females, it's about an female to male ratio that we see.

We still don't know why, which is interesting after all the studies we've been doing. We still call it idiopathic scoliosis, meaning we still don't know exactly what the etiology is. For whatever reason, we think the anterior front aspect of the spine starts to grow a little bit faster than the back and then the curve of the spine starts to curve and rotate.

It can go at varying paces and all depends on how fast the child is growing. We did a lot of the pioneer work here, and it really landed on something called vertebral body tethering.

What it is, it's a growth modulation procedure. We're trying to harness the remaining growth of the child, which can negatively impact them because the more they grow, the bigger the curve gets, so can we reverse that and actually turn it in the other direction? What growth modulation procedure does it tries to compress the growth plates asymmetrically. If you squeeze the growth plates on one side, that will slow down the growth, and if you relieve pressure on the inside of that curve, or the concave portion, that growth plate will theoretically grow faster or asymmetrically compared to the contralateral side.

A nice part about it is you're not actually fusing the vertebrae, you're allowing the vertebrae to continue to move. The screws that are placed into the spine and the front of the chest through these small little ports on the side that's done all via thoracoscopic cameras does not fuse the bones together.

They're connected by a flexible cord, so that will allow those motion segments to be preserved. That, we think, will have better implications over the long-term. From the moment that we first arrived at Shriners, the greeting at the front desk was very welcoming.

From that point on, we felt very comfortable in putting Seth in the hands of the people from Shriners. From the nurses to the doctors, even the guys that run the parking garage, it was an overwhelming feeling of just love and support for the kids. Pahys took the time to really talk to Seth and find out what his activities were and what was best for.

The attitude was just a lot more towards Seth's needs versus what the medical doctors could achieve. We were really happy with what Shriners had to offer. It was scary, but being with Dr. Pahys and his staff, I felt a little more comfortable. You can definitely tell that they know what they're doing and they're experts in their field. I felt very comfortable being with them, so that gave me a little more assurance that my outcome was going to be good. When it was over, Dr. Pahys came out and he had some x-rays for us to keep and showed us the progress that Seth had.

To see the change, he had x-rays from before and x-rays after, but we were so thankful that he had that opportunity. Now, he did very well after surgery, I remember. He was one of the ones that just kind of got up, got moving, and couldn't be bothered by all the complaints that most folks have. He just had his eyes forward and was ready to go and let's get up, let's get walking. He did that more and more each day and then he was gone, he was out of the hospital in no time.

We were just really, really impressed at how resilient he was. At home, down in our basement, we measured him and marked it on a two-by-four and dated it, where he was at. A week later, when we came home, we did it again, and he had grown an inch just coming out of surgery.

He was pretty excited about that. With a large full-time staff of pediatric orthopaedic surgeons in the United States, as well as a comprehensive team of physical, occupational, speech and other therapists, we are able to provide customized care to each child.

We provide advanced care for burn injuries and related scarring, along with physical rehabilitation and emotional support. We were the first health care system in the country to develop spinal cord injury rehabilitation centers designed specifically for children. Our groundbreaking research has led to innovative treatment techniques, providing care that helps children lead a full, active and healthy life. Our cleft lip and palate reconstruction program gives kids a reason to smile.

Shriners Hospitals. Spinal cord injury We were the first health care system in the country to develop spinal cord injury rehabilitation centers designed specifically for children.