Before and After

Surgery went really well. Dr Abel came out and said that surgery went even better than expected. He was able to fix 98% of the curve in my spine (the curve caused by the accident and not the natural curve). Healing has gone pretty well. I came home from the hospital on Wed. I'm still in quite a bite of pain and the drugs tend to knock me out which is why this post has taken so long to write.

Pictures speak louder than word, so here are a few pictures that tell the story better than I could:

The curve of my back pre surgery.

The curve of my back post-surgery. 

EDIT: The above 2 pictures were taken less than a week apart from each other. I didn't lose any weight between them. Straightening my spine made THAT big of a difference.

This is what my spine looked like for the 3 years between the accident an my surgery.

Th

This is my spine post surgery. In the front of my spine is where Dr Abel was able to actually replace T9 (the vertebrae that was crushing and causing the spinal curvature).  You can see the pins used to help hold my spine in place while the bone fuses. 

This picture shows my foot long scar where they did a posterior approach to straighten my spine. I'm so thankful that  they were able to do so so only going through the back instead of doing a thoracaotomy  (remove a rib, deflate a lung to reach my spine.

EDIT: This picture also shows my beautiful tattoo (Thanks Caitie!), which most of my extended family had no idea about. Whoops...