Deepa BharathThere were days barely three years...

Deepa Bharath

There were days barely three years ago when Alex Tobiessen couldn’t

even lift a bowl of cereal.

Today, the sophomore at Corona del Mar High School is part of the

varsity soccer and track teams.

The 15-year-old battled scoliosis, an abnormal side-to-side

curvature of the spine, and not only fought away the pain and its

effects on her body but rallied back to become a champion athlete.

Through her tribulation, the teenager says she felt it in her

heart that she could do it -- that she could go back to being a

normal kid playing soccer and going out with friends.

“After it was over, I told myself that it was no big deal and,

like, everything happens for a reason,” Alex said.

The journey was a tough one, said Susan Tobiessen, Alex’s mother.

Alex was first diagnosed with scoliosis when she was 10, said

Tobiessen, who has a master’s degree in sports medicine and runs Body

Design, a fitness center for women.

“I looked at her spine and noticed it was crooked,” she said.

Right after the diagnosis, Alex’s doctor made her wear a back

brace. She wore it for two years, but it didn’t help, Tobiessen said.

Instead, her condition grew progressively worse.

“The curvature of the spine was also compressing her heart and

lung on the left side,” Tobiessen explained.

Alex was also beginning to experience sharp pains in her neck and

her back. Surgery looked inevitable at that point.

“It was a complicated surgery involving some risks,” Tobiessen

said. “But we decided to go for it.”

What surgeons essentially did was place metal rods on each side of

her spine. They then connected the rods to the vertebrae in Alex’s

backbone, Tobiessen said. To achieve that, they had to remove one of

Alex’s ribs, pulverize it and then place the crushed bone between her

vertebrae and disks so her spine would fuse together, she said.

“Chances of complications from the surgery is about 3%, but

unfortunately Alex had those complications,” her mother said. “Her

lungs collapsed shortly after surgery, and she was having a tough

time breathing.”

Alex had to be rushed to a different hospital by ambulance after

her lungs started filling up with liquid.

“They told me months later, when I was better, that I was on the

verge of dying,” Alex said. “I was really shocked that it happened to

me.”

It gave her a new appreciation for life, Alex said.

“A lot of things I took for granted before, I started looking at

differently,” she said.

Alex spent a week in the intensive care unit. She had played

soccer since she was 5, but sports of any kind were out of question

in Alex’s situation, Tobiessen said.

“She had to stay out of all sports for a year after the surgery,”

she said.

That was probably the most difficult part of the recovery for her,

Alex said.

“I’d see my friends playing soccer and doing stuff that I couldn’t

do,” she said. “It was hard to see that and not being able to do

anything about it.”

But what Alex did in that one year bore testimony to Alex’s

determination to get back on her feet and do what she loved to do,

her mother said. And it helped that Tobiessen is a professional

physical therapist.

“I got her walking within the first few days,” Tobiessen said.

“Then I got her started on Pilates equipment, and gradually we were

doing weights, spine-twisting and exercises to improve stability.”

Alex was jogging about seven months after her surgery.

“She was a real trooper,” her mother said. “The motivation for her

was to overcome the intense pain she felt during the months before

her surgery. It helped her healing process. And she very much wanted

to get back to leading a normal life.”

Last year, Alex made it to the varsity soccer and track teams.

“To make those teams in my freshman year after all that I’d been

through, it was a thrill,” the teenager said.

Alex sounds happy when she says she can do “pretty much anything

now.”

“I even go skiing and horseback riding,” she said.

Alex also got a chance to tell her story to readers of Teen

magazine. Her first-person account of her battle with scoliosis has

been published in the magazine’s November issue.

“It’s cool to be able to tell my story in a magazine myself,” she

said, with a laugh. “It’s just ....cool.”

* DEEPA BHARATH is the enterprise and general assignment reporter.

She may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or by e-mail at

[email protected].