The summer before Emma’s freshman year of high school, she discovered she had scoliosis. It was the very day she came back from a weeks-long summer camp. That happened to be a day she was wearing a summer dress for special occasion, and her mother could see the visible curve in her spine and that her shoulders were a bit uneven. After seeking the advice of a local specialist, they weren’t too worried. She wasn’t in any pain and had been checked for scoliosis previously—with no problems.

Learn the rest of her incredible story in her own words, below:

I then discovered that I had a 53 degree curve. This meant that the best option for me at that point was to undergo surgery. This was surprising for me because I’ve always been an extremely active kid, and this never affected me while I was at camp. I also thought that a doctor would have caught it by then. I ended up undergoing a ten-level fusion on February 23, 2022. I was in the hospital for 4 days, 1 being in the ICU.

I stayed out of school for an entire month, doing as much virtual learning as I could. This was scary for me, especially because this was my first year of high school. I didn’t want this obstacle to take over my first year as a high schooler. I recovered faster than most, being officially back at school in late March of 2022 and slowly going back into sports a few months later. I truly look back at this time in my life as a place where I was most vulnerable, but I came out even stronger.

My story gave me the passion to begin my Gold Award Project known as Bending Back: Empowering Scoliosis Awareness. People most affected by scoliosis are young middle schoolers, and I don’t want others to have to follow the same process I went through. The overall goal of Bending Back is to spread awareness about scoliosis to others, so they can have the opportunity to detect it early before it becomes a health issue.

Discover the rest of Emma’s story and view Bending Back on Emma’s Story page.