2025 | I have a spine condition, what now?, by Rafaela Castro

Today, I’m going to tell you about how I discovered I had a spine condition when I was 11 years old. Here we go! It was 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, on a terrible day during the pandemic when I started feeling bad. I had a cough, a sore throat, and a high fever. I thought: I'M GOING TO DIE FROM COVID. Up to that point, everything was fine, right? My mom took me to the doctor, and I had an X-ray done. After the X-ray, the doctor said it wasn’t anything serious, but there was another problem. I thought: I'M GOING TO DIE; in the end, I didn’t die, but I discovered that I had scoliosis.

I got home panicking, thinking I was going to die from having scoliosis. I researched a lot to learn about this condition in my spine that I had never noticed before; it was a lateral deviation in the spine with an abnormal curvature. At that point, I was desperate and went to see a doctor. He prescribed me to wear a brace; I wore it for a while. We realized it wasn’t working, so I went to another doctor in the capital who prescribed another brace that went around my neck. When I saw that, I panicked and cried so much when I got home, not out of fear of not getting better but because of how I would look in the mirror with that thing on.

I wore it for a year and never looked in the mirror; my self-esteem was terrible, and I hated going to school because people would look at me and tease me, but many also treated me with kindness. I wore it because I thought it would help with my treatment, but I was terrified of the mirror. That phase of wearing the brace was the hardest moment of my life so far; my mental health is still affected today.

After some time, we went to another doctor, and my family and I realized that brace wasn’t helping me at all. That’s when I took off the brace for good. Nowadays, I don’t wear it anymore, but I do physical therapy every day to improve my mobility and body aesthetics. Looking back now, I think about how much I suffered from that experience but also how much it helped me become a better person and especially taught me never to judge others. It has been my greatest struggle in life so far, you know? And I would go through it all again; I wouldn’t be the same girl if it weren't for everything I've been through on that Monday in 2020.