Life’s a CLIMB
Pulling on my dance shoes, I couldn’t believe it was going to be my last lesson. Twirling and jumping to the Irish music, I put my all into it.
I was just 12-years-old, in 2005, and I was waiting to have a major 12-hour operation on my spine, for my newly diagnosed scoliosis.
‘I don’t want to have it done,’ I sobbed to my mum. ‘My back isn’t that bad.’
‘You could end up in a wheelchair,’ my mum, Dympna, 60, said, teary-eyed. ‘Or even paralysed.’
The thought of having my back cut open from the nape of my neck to my coccyx, for metal rods to be put in my spine, terrified me.
But I knew she was right.
I had adolescent idiopathic scoliosis which was brought on by my growth spurt.
Life before my teacher spotted my shoulders were wonky in a school photo, was completely normal.
