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Saturday 9 March 2013

Shalimar boy undergoes two surgeries to fix scoliosis

Tanner Dubose 
Tanner Dubose had to wear a halo before the first of his two surgeries. 


The first time Bill Dubose remembers his son Tanner showing him a lump on the left shoulder blade was about three years ago.
It wasn’t hurting his then 9-year-old son or keeping him from doing anything, so Dubose suggested they watch it and bring it up at his next doctor’s visit.
Just in the last six months the lump quickly worsened into life-threatening scoliosis. Tanner had a 127-degree curve in his spine that endangered his heart and lungs.
When a local doctor deemed Tanner’s case too severe for him to fix, his family in Shalimar began looking elsewhere.
“It crossed his mind that maybe no one could do anything,” Dubose said from Shriners Hospitals for Children in St. Louis, where Tanner has undergone two surgeries to straighten his spine. “I was devastated inside.”
Dubose and now 11-year-old Tanner have been at the hospital since January.
His first surgery Feb. 28 was the preparation for the second, more complicated one, Dubose said.
During the second surgery Thursday, part of Tanner’s vertebrae was removed and rods and plates were attached to the rest of his spine. Surgery on scoliosis as severe as Tanner’s is rare, so it was watched by more than 100 doctors through a live feed to an auditorium.
In six months to a year, Tanner’s spine and the equipment will fuse together. For now, Tanner won’t be able to lift more than 5 pounds for about a month.
“He’s going to get proficient in video games and homework,” his father joked.
Tanner will get a souvenir, however.
He’s taking home his “halo,” a horseshoe shaped piece of metal that was screwed to his skull for about two months before the surgeries. Weights were attached to the halo through a pulley system to help start straightening his spine and prepare him for the operations.
The only time Tanner went without the halo and weights was when he took a shower. Tanner’s always been a good sleeper, Dubose said, so only some extra fluffy pillows were needed.
“I think he’s grown a few inches,” Dubose said. “I think he has gotten straighter and not hunched over as much.”
Tanner said the halo hurt for about the first week, but then it became normal.
“I hardly noticed it,” he said.
Tanner walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes with the halo weights two times a day, five days a week before the surgeries. His perseverance inspired his father to work on his own health.
“If my son, who’s in this condition, can do this, I can do it,” Dubose said.
Tanner is taking it all in stride. In some ways, he is older than his 11 years, his father said.
“He likes normal kid stuff, but he also wakes up to watch The Weather Channel to learn how to prepare for that day,” he said.
Tanner was nervous when he first learned about the upcoming surgeries. And it’s been hard to be in St. Louis without his mom and three sisters, he said.
There is no timetable for him and his father to come home.
When Tanner does return, “I’ll go visit my friends and spend time with my family. Just do whatever I did before,” he said.


Source : nwf daily news 



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