(December 17, 2004) — “Stand up straight,” yells the teacher. “What is wrong with your posture? Can’t you stand up straight child?” And there stands a child, her eyes tracing the lines between the tiles, her back twisted as though wanting to form the shape of the letter “s,” uninformed and helpless as to what ails her. Her last resort is to consult her doctor. “So I went and made an appointment and then we go and they take X-rays of my back and when the doctor walks in, he says that you have scoliosis and need surgery. And I’m like. ‘Hi, to you too!’” exclaimed senior Sareen Kellzi, who was diagnosed with scoliosis when she was 15. Scoliosis is an idiopathic disease, meaning that the cause is unknown. Its effects are curves in the spine as if one was trying to maneuver their body similar to a snake. Students in middle school often are tested once during either seventh or eighth grade to see if the alignment of their spine is straight and that there is no asymmetry. Using the Adam’s forward bend test where the patient bends with arms forward and knees straight, the physician traced our spinal cords and then remarked with hands on hips, “Oh, lovely spine,” or “You might need to get that checked.” But unfortunately it was a different situation for Kellzi. “They didn’t do it for me. The school didn’t do it at all.” And without this test, Kellzi progressed through her life with her occasional visits to her doctor and never a single word breathed about the abnormalities in her spinal cord. “You can’t let it go on for too long because your heart and lungs will become compressed, and it can cause you to die.” said Kellzi. “I didn’t have surgery right away because we were really freaked out and my dad was searching for alternative forms of treatment. My parents were actually thinking of not having the surgery because they were so scared, but I didn’t want to go through life living like that.” According to the Scoliosis Research Society, Kellzi’s type of scoliosis, which is categorized as adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, is seen at equal rates in both boys and girls. However, the risk of further development of curve progression in girls is higher than that of boys. The magnitude of the curve in the spine is measured in degrees, and when the curve is less than 50 degrees surgery is not the top suggestion of healing. Instead patients wear braces that adjust their spinal cord. But if the curve is above 50 degrees, surgery is the optimum alternative. At 70 degrees or more, it is considered a life-threatening curve. “Doctors said my curve was too advanced. Mine was around 66 degrees.” So on July 5, Kellzi went under the knife, with heavy anesthetics, for six hours at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and remained in the hospital for a week. “You can’t realign the spine. It’s like a tree, when it bends you can’t make it straight, so you tie a rod to it and pull it back. So they stuck a rod in my back and hooked it on to my spine, to screw it together at the bottom and top. And it will stay there forever.” For a six-month period after the surgery, Kellzi was prohibited from doing anything strenuous that would stress her back. “If I dropped anything I needed to call someone to come pick it up, and I hated that because I felt restrained. And then after a while, I got better and learned to forget about it,” said Kellzi. Scoliosis affects around 6 million people in the United States, and regrettably there is no cure according to the National Scoliosis Foundation. However, doctors are starting to suggest that the usual scoliosis screening conducted during middle school be stopped, and that only when the case of scoliosis is serious enough for surgery, that is should then be tended to. Angered by this fact and also that scoliosis is not commonly known amongst high school students, Kellzi’s senior project is focused on alerting people to take preventive measures for scoliosis, so that they do not discover that they harbor the defect too late. “It’s still with me because when people pat me on the back I get kind of scared and it’s really weird. I just want the word out.”