Ten years ago last month, Jessica had scoliosis surgery with me at Duke University Medical Center.  Her story was featured on Discovery Channel’s show called “The Hospital”, which was a wonderful series of patient and physician stores from Duke Medical Center, similar to recent Boston Med show on ABC.

Jessica was a pharmacist her 20’s at the time with a severe scoliosis, and only 4 feet 10 inches tall.
After surgery she was two inches taller, measuring the magical 5 feet!
I will never forget that day in the operating room, and also in the clinic when we were all crowded in with the cameras and crews.

Bill Hayes was the producer of that show, and did an awesome job.  He has produced other successful documentary-type reality TV shows for Discovery Channel — he has a very thoughtful spirit.

Jessica’s story has been shown many times on TV over the past 10 years.  I loaned my copy of her video to a student years ago, and never got it back — Jessica offered to send me a copy, which I would love to see again.

Jessica shared with me that she did have a baby 3 years ago, no problem with delivery, etc with her scoliosis.  They were able to do a spinal anesthesia, and she did bring her X-Ray into the hospital to show the obstetrician and anesthesiologist as I suggested, so they knew where the hardware and fusion ended.  People do listen to me!

She’s done great over the past 10 years, but had a flare up of some back pain when lifting something heavy a few days ago.  She may have given herself a small annular disc tear, which will likely heal up well with conservative therapy.

It was so good to see Jessica back, doing well 10 years later!  Time does fly.

Dr. Lloyd Hey
Hey Clinic for Scoliosis and Spine Surgery
https://www.heyclinic.com