Bonnie
I am 33 years old in the year 2000. This is also my brother's story. I was diagnosed with scoliosis when I was three years old. From that age, my doctors ordered exercises, threatened me with surgery, braced me at age nine, and finally operated on me at 17. I was also subjected to an obscene amount of x-rays, waiting room magazines, walking around in a drafty gowns, and being observed by nearly every intern in town for 15 years. I was in the hospital for two weeks and a cast for six months. A real high point was when I tried the SCOLITRON aka electrical torture therapy. The wires from the walkman style box attached pads to two specific locations on my right side. It regulated a six second electric current every six seconds, which stimulated my muscles, jerking my torso violently. I was supposed to SLEEP like this, mind you. If the conductor pads, which were attached with tape and conducting jelly, came off during the night, an alarm sounded, and as I fumbled to fix it, I would be painfully shocked since there was no longer proper conduction. Even with the jelly, the electricity burned my skin, leaving oozing sores that my clothing would dry to and rip off more skin. The whole situation was terrible, not even delving into self image issues as an adolescent female deformed, braced, burned, and cut open, whose parents thought all along that Jesus would heal me one glad morning. I write this to urge ANY parents to, at the very least, refrain from inflicting the scolitron on their children.