A Runner's Unexpected Diagnosis and Path to Healing
I gripped my lower back as I stood before the illuminated screen, staring at black-and-white X-rays that revealed a truth I couldn't accept. At 45 years old, having never undergone an X-ray before and rarely visiting hospitals, I protested: "That's not me." I straightened my strained spine, refusing to acknowledge the anatomical reality before me.
The images showed my lower backbone curved sharply to the right in a capital C shape, my middle spine jogging leftward, and my shoulders and hips completely misaligned. "You must have mixed up the X-rays," I insisted, but the doctor traced the curvature with his finger and delivered the diagnosis: "Bordering on severe scoliosis."
The Physical Reality Confronts Athletic Identity
"But I just ran a 10-mile road race," I protested, wincing as fireworks of pain exploded through my back, hips, and legs. "I placed fourth in my age group with my fastest time ever." The doctor frowned in disbelief: "You're telling me you never knew? This condition typically manifests in childhood."
Tears welled in my eyes as my fit middle-aged body seemed to crumple inward. A tiny seed of anger sprouted from a dark crevice of my consciousness. Where were my parents during my childhood screenings? In that moment, I flashed back to 1976 and our family's pristine split-level house with its white painted brick, black shutters, and lemon-yellow door.
Around that time, when schools conducted simple forward bend tests to check children for scoliosis during gym classes, my upwardly mobile nuclear family was quietly disintegrating. "You need to quit running," the doctor advised as he pressed his finger pads into my inflamed hump. "What?" My throat constricted at the suggestion. Running had been my salvation for decades.
Running as Escape and Survival Mechanism
During seventh grade, as I entered junior high, my father had lost another Pentagon contract while my mother's dizzy spells kept her confined to the blue bedroom. As the determined eldest child, I set my alarm for dawn and tiptoed out before my father awoke. When I joined the huddle of misfits on the blacktop—our breath visible in the shivery morning air—I felt a small victory.
I had escaped my father's inevitable wrath, the vindictive unpredictability of what I would later recognize as manic depression. Undiagnosed and self-medicating with gin, his moods created constant tension at home. With heart pounding and lungs panting, by the time we completed our first running loop, thoughts of home had receded. For a miraculous moment, it was just my body moving in rhythm with the pack.
Years of Defiance and Escalating Consequences
"Stop running and see me back in a month," the doctor instructed before handing me a prescription and walking out. Within weeks, I returned to the running trails, pushing through increasing pain. That doctor didn't understand what running meant to me, I convinced myself.
Twelve years later, at age 57, I found myself running down a Vermont dirt road—seeking my daily endorphin fix with the scent of cow manure wafting in the breeze. Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks as my body became engulfed in flames of pain. I couldn't take another step. Doubled over with sweat pouring from my head and heart racing with panic, I eventually landed in the emergency room.
"Pain level?" the attending nurse asked, glancing up from her iPad. I shut my eyes as my body screamed with stabbing, burning sensations shooting through my back into my hips and down my prickly, numbed legs. "Seven... eight? Nine," I responded with a guttural voice. My secret deformity had returned—perhaps worsened after a decade of defying medical advice.
Confronting Surgical Reality and Emotional Truths
"See here?" the spine surgeon pointed to new X-rays. "Serious lumbar curve of 45 degrees with apex at L4, then a 20-degree rotation at T2 and T3. That's where you get disk compression and nerve impingement causing neuropathy in your legs." The word "neuropathy" left me murmuring in a cortisol-infused daze, finally seeing the snaking horror inside me.
"I'm sorry to tell you: You're a candidate for surgery," he continued. "The sooner the better—to prevent your spine from sinking further with gravity and time, potentially impinging on vital organs." Gripping the exam table, I caught sight of a spinal model adorned with bolts and rods; the gleaming steel sent a shiver up my contorted spine.
"Will it stop the pain?" I asked, biting my lips together to trap sobs in my chest. Parentless, partnerless, childless, and petless—over the years I had successfully escaped all confines. Now this surgeon proposed immobilizing me from the inside with what felt like a steel cage.
Reaching the Breaking Point and Seeking Alternatives
The prescribed steroids provided only temporary masking of symptoms. When they wore off weeks later, my broken body returned with a vengeance. I couldn't walk five steps without squatting to catch my breath, couldn't carry anything—not a backpack, groceries, purse, or even a feather. I could barely stand at the vanity long enough to brush my teeth.
Through life's roller-coaster ups and downs, my body had been one reliable constant—cycling centuries, winning triathlons, running daily to keep my unruly chemicals in haphazard balance. Now I couldn't even sit comfortably. Confined to my bed to avoid pain, I felt myself sinking into despair with storm clouds of suicidal ideation hanging over me.
Desperate thoughts—"well, it's been a good life and maybe my time is up"—induced hot flashes of terror that, thankfully, thrust me out of bed onto my yoga mat. Stretched out in child's pose, I exhaled a sigh as tears gushed forth. As a child and top runner on my team, my coach said I made running look easy, but he'd been wrong. I didn't love running—it hurt. Still, I returned day after day, year after year, because my body knew something I didn't: physical pain beat emotional pain any day.
The Turning Point: Embracing Holistic Healing
Little could I know the two were inextricably entwined. My body-mind was screaming at me to wake up and take action. I couldn't run from it any longer. The all-consuming pain impelled me to take a life-changing step. Two weeks later, for the first time in my life at 57 going on 58, I lay on a physical therapist's table.
"Start here at the sacrum," said Dr. Jen, kneading her fingers into the rigid triangle of bone at the base of my spine. My eyes welled—less from outright pain and more from relief at the tenderness of being touched in that flawed, fragile place I hadn't wanted to acknowledge. All the medical doctors I'd seen never touched—they just analyzed, diagnosed, prognosed, and prescribed.
"And here's your overworked convexity," she continued as she pressed her palm against my hump. A well of sadness rose inside me as tears slid down my cheeks and out the massage table's face hole. "Can't you see it protruding? I'm not sure why... how they never... caught this." My diaphragm contracted as I held my breath, returning mentally to the parental neglect narrative.
Reframing Childhood and Finding Empowerment
Dr. Jen exhaled audibly. "So many ways parents go wrong." She paused, spreading her hands across my throbbing scapula. "But the way I see it, they did you a favor. If they'd elected surgery—pretty crude back in the '70s—you'd be up for re-surgery about now. Other scenario: the dreaded brace with less than 3% success rate because no kid can withstand being encased 23 hours a day."
I nodded, certain I couldn't have endured that either, as snapshot images appeared behind my eyelids: Dad teaching me to throw a perfect spiral, navigate a two-wheeler, and swing a wicked backhand. "Either way," Dr. Jen continued, "you'd have lost those early athletic years—runner, gymnast, tennis player. Who knows about all the cool things you've done as an adult—triathlons, bicycle tours. And didn't you say you were a dancer?"
"Salsa, swing, zydeco..." I whispered through quiet tears. "Amazing," she said, gripping my shoulders. "You're fit. You've got fortitude. You can do this." "Do what?" I asked with eyes closed, listening for the answer I already knew in my wise old bones: heal myself.
Embracing a Multifaceted Healing Journey
The truth resonated in my chest. My father had done some good, loving things—he'd seen my athletic potential and encouraged me. But he disappeared into an illness he refused to acknowledge, and he never returned. "I can't let what happened to him happen to me," I declared, pushing up off the table with heart thumping. "I'll do anything." Dr. Jen smiled: "Then let's begin."
Glancing out the window at a maple tree in fiery fall majesty, I felt the vise grip on my lumbar ever so slightly loosen as I stretched out on the floor to learn my exercises. Change was in the air. One year later, I stood before new X-rays. "No change," the surgeon scratched his chin. Tears glossed my eyes—this was good news for my blessed, degenerative spine I'd come to call "Caroline."
"What are you doing?" the doctor asked, cocking his head. "Everything," I said with a grin and strong stance. I had hiked mountains, swum rivers, practiced yoga everywhere—forests, beaches, and deserts. I had begun to dance again.
Integrating Diverse Healing Modalities
Dr. Jen had opened a door, then my exploration took its own adventurous course. I attended shaman ceremonies in Santa Fe, past-life regressions in Sedona, yoga for scoliosis in Asheville, and sought Chinese medicine in Montana. Through specialized Schroth therapy, I learned to stand and breathe—basic bodily capacities—in entirely new ways.
Caroline had done her best with the structure given; it was up to me to counter a lifetime of adaptive misalignment. Yet full recovery meant going deeper. Through somatic therapy, I faced the neglect of the past and learned to release not just my parents, but myself from the blame and shame of our wounding history—and, with it, the tension held in my body over decades.
This was a great weight off my shoulders—and off Caroline. The willful eldest in me, determined to make everything okay when it just wasn't, could simply, with practice and daily moment-by-moment reminders, surrender.
The Ongoing Nature of True Healing
My spine was no straighter, but it also wasn't more crooked, and it hadn't sunk into vital organs. The pain hadn't vanished, but it wasn't debilitating. Most days it mostly receded, hovering around levels 1, 2, or 3. When pain did flare up, I knew how to calm the flames—rest, swim, or soak in a tub instead of pretending it away or buying into its inevitable worsening.
I wasn't cured. Curing is passive and temporary. Healing, on the other hand, is an active, ongoing process that involves not just body, but mind, heart, and spirit. My healing continues. Now four years into this journey, I see it as a lifelong process—deepening connection to myself, learning to nurture the child within, showering her with the loving care she always deserved.
Despite my best efforts, there may still come a day when spinal fusion becomes necessary. By then, I trust my body-mind will be prepared to make that decision from a place of love, not fear, and transform a cure into healing.
