Scoliosis

One of James’ many problems is his scoliosis. Honestly, it hasn’t really been considered a problem until recently. It was just one of the things he was born with, and compared to his other issues it has been pretty low on the list of concerns. Now, because of the curvature of his spine, there is some worry that it might be causing some issues with his internal organs, especially his lungs.

We took James to see an orthopedic surgeon (aka spinal doc) last week to get his opinion. They took a couple of x-rays to see how bad the scoliosis is.

I got a little confused when looking at the above x-rays. The circle on the left side of the x-ray images is the VNS that is implanted in James’ chest and should actually be on the right side of the image, when viewing James from the front, which is how they took the x-rays. If they took the x-rays from behind, then the VNS would be on the left side like they are in the x-rays.

Regardless, you can still see just how bad his spine curves. I would imagine with a curve like that that the spine is putting a little bit of pressure on his lung. The doctor wants James to go back to using a TLSO (thoracic-lumbar-sacral orthosis), or what Stacy calls a turtle shell. We’ll check back in with him in a month and if he feels that it’s not working, he has some ideas for spinal surgery this summer. He didn’t want to get into all of the details about surgery because he wants to focus on the TLSO first.

Easter

Easter was pretty low-key this year. Had a very nice dinner at Stacy’s brother’s house. James even got a haircut. Finally!

Cars 3 Tour

Okay, so I may be 41 years old, but this was freaking cool! Those of you who have kids probably know of the Cars animated movies. Well, as a way of promoting the upcoming 3rd movie in the series, they sent the stars of the movie out on tour around the United States and one of those stops happened to be at the mall where we live. So of course we had to go. They had life-sized versions of some of the cars, and a semi-trailer that they converted into a little movie theater where we got to watch a sneak peek of the new movie. I don’t know who was more excited, me or James.