Elizabeth was measured for her scoliosis brace, and the brace was made, and then we had a fitting appointment that involved power tools, and now she is “weaning on” to the brace: wearing it for increasingly long sessions for an increasingly large total of hours per day. I meant to do a “What It’s Like…” post for the measuring and another for the fitting, but I forgot, and now already the details are fading.
The gist is that Elizabeth and I both found the measurement appointment very uncomfortable. She had to wear a semi-see-through extremely-clingy long tank-top that looked kind of like an extremely inappropriate dress; I could see her underwear through it. The technician doing the measurements was a man, and he had to do a lot of measuring with a tight measuring tape all over her torso, including her chest, her pelvic bones, and her butt. I was/am mad that they didn’t have a female tech for this. I sat there wondering how much education I would need to be the one to fill that gap.
The final straw was when he had to use a handheld device that touchlessly scanned her shape into the computer. She was positioned facing the screen, and her own 3D shape appeared on the screen as he scanned. Any color for this 3D shape would have been bad enough, but they made it beige. So basically it looked like her naked self appearing on the computer screen, in front of a man and her mother.
The only fun part was that she got to choose what the brace looks like: there were a bunch of solid-color choices and a bunch of patterns.
Elizabeth and I were talking about the appointment on the way home, and between us we easily thought of several ways it could have been less excruciating. One involves an invention (make a totally-hands-off measurement scanner), but the others are all doable right now:
1. Have a female technician. I don’t care if they need to offer full scholarships with pay to get women into this field in our area. FEMALE. TECHNICIAN.
2. If she has to wear a long tight tank-top dress for the measuring, fine. But could it be one we can’t see her underwear through?
3. Patient should be facing AWAY from the computer screen as the 3D scan is being done.
4. The 3D scan should appear in a NON-SKIN-COLOR such as green or red or purple, just in case the patient does catch a glimpse.
Anyway. To his credit, the tech seemed aware of the situation’s potential for discomfort, and made remarks intended to be reassuring: he made sure to tell me that he had an 11-year-old daughter, and he kept telling us what he was about to do and why he needed to do it. And he had a pleasing and non-threatening temperament/manner—almost apologetic. But all I’m really saying with this paragraph is that it could have been worse.
The next appointment was the fitting; that was 4 weeks after the measurement session and was with a different (but still male) tech. The brace had been made, and now a tech needed to make sure it fit Elizabeth well. He put the brace onto her and measured some things; he had her sit down to make sure it still fit well. He asked her if any places were particularly uncomfortable (hard to answer). He then took the brace off, brought it into an adjoining room, and there were power-tool sounds for awhile—maybe about 15 minutes. He came back, put the brace back onto her, checked it again, and said it was great. He said a lot of times a brace needs more adjusting than that (they allow 1.5 hours for the appointment), but that this one had been particularly well made.
He then showed me how to put the brace onto Elizabeth and how to take it off of her. He put two sets of marks on the straps: one set for now, and the other set to gradually aim for once she’s used to wearing it on the looser setting. He went over the weaning-on instructions. I’m too lazy to go fetch them from the other room, but it’s something like: the first 4-5 days wear it 1-2 hours at a time for 4-6 hours total; the second 4-5 days wear it 2-4 hours at a time for 6-8 hours total; and so on. She only has to wear it 12 hours total per day even at maximum, and we are almost there now; yesterday she wore it for 8 hours in one session.
She can remove it herself, so what we’ve been doing is I put it onto her before she goes to school, and then mid-day she removes the brace and leaves it at the nurse’s office. Then, depending whether it’s a day she needs to bring her trumpet home, either I go mid-day to the school to pick up the brace, or else she picks it up from the nurse at the end of the day and brings it home. Now she’s able to wear the brace for the whole school day so we ought to be able to stop these daily figurings-out, except gym class is still messing us up.
(She might end up doing her 12 hours/day at night, but she is supposed to finish the weaning-on period before she starts trying to sleep in it. The tech said that especially with kids, we want to avoid disrupting sleep if possible.)
Elizabeth said I could show you what the brace looked like as long as I didn’t include her face:
Not too bad. She wears a special seamless tank top underneath it (the tank top has a built-in flap that goes between her underarm and higher side of the brace), and after the brace is in place she folds the bottom of the tank top up over the bottom of the brace. Then she wears a regular shirt over it, and if you didn’t know she was wearing the brace you wouldn’t guess it. I can’t even tell, except there’s a little bit of a bump at the back/bottom of her shirt.