Paul Godfrey is like Peter Pan…he never gets old. When he came to visit me at my downtown real estate office, it briefly crossed my mind that he might be interested in buying something. But alas, he didn’t react to the glittering marketing materials at all. He focused his precious time on catching up on our longtime friendship. Paul has many longtime friends, and he takes care of each one of us. When I began my foray into writing, doing an emotional piece about my son, the first person I called was Godfrey, who was then running The Toronto Sun. I told him that I had written a piece that I thought was perfect for his newspaper. He told me later that he had thought to himself, “Oh god, not another friend who wants to write”. But he asked me to send him the piece anyway, and promised to forward it to the appropriate editor. He called to tell me a little while later that the editor actually liked my story and would be calling me. “You seem surprised”, I pointed out.
“You have no idea how many ‘friends’ call me wanting to write”, he laughed. The most pressure he’s received, he says, was when he was president of the Toronto Blue Jays. “I even got a call from a friend of mine who was a dentist. He told me that he didn’t like ‘fixing teeth’ anymore, and would love to work for the Jays. He kept calling and pressuring me to find him a job within the Jays organization. “I’ll take anything”, he told me.’” “So did you find him something?”, I wanted to know. “Of course”, Paul said, “I found him a job taking tickets at the door. That didn’t go over too big”, Paul laughs, adding, “the doctor was indignant and said, ‘Why are you giving me such a terrible job’’ I reminded him that he said he’d take anything”. But the friend was bitterly disappointed. “‘I thought I’d be working directly with the ball players’ he told me, I pointed out that even I didn’t get to deal directly with the ball players and I was the CEO”, Paul laughs.
I don’t even know how Paul and I became friends, I was introduced to him at an event many years ago and was instantly his pal. I introduced him to my son Luke, years later, and one day Luke told me, “I went to Paul Godfrey’s office today”.”What? Is he your friend now too?”, I asked. “Well, I wanted to get his thoughts on a few things”, Luke said. Apparently the extremely busy Godfrey came out to share some ideas with Luke, who was with him for about two hours. “I’ve done that before too”, Luke said.
There are only 24 hours in a day, I don’t know how Paul does it. At the end of our visit, Paul felt bad. He felt he had done too much of the talking, I pointed out that he had tried a number of times to get me to talk about myself. “Normally you get no chance to talk at all”, I told him, “this was the first day I got you to tell a bit of your story”. I found out that Godfrey was brought up in the Kensington market area of Toronto, and graduated from university in Chemical Engineering. “The teacher figured out that there was a problem”, he tells me. “She asked me, “what’s wrong? You’re graduating as a chemical engineer and you don’t look happy” Paul says that he replied, “I’m not happy, I don’t want to be an engineer”. He adds, “Imagine, after four years of intense study and a degree, I hated my chosen path. “The teacher encouraged me to find something that I loved to do”. And not long afterwards, inspired by his teacher and his own mother who was involved in local politics, and who put his name forward as a nominee for alderman when she herself refused a bid to run, Paul ran and won, thus finding something that he loved to do. He succeeded in his 20’s and hasn’t stopped succeeding since. From being an alderman, to being Toronto comptroller, to head of the Toronto Sun, running the Blue Jays, head of Post Media, and constantly being asked to run numerous other companies.
Paul at 87 is a people person and a happy family man. And it shows. He is trim, dressed to kill, and is incredibly youthful. This is a guy who is excited about his life, his career, his sons, and his wife Gina, who I ran into in the grocery store several years ago and who said to me, “I’m really smart, I married Paul Godfrey”. And Paul is still going strong. As enthused about life as he ever was, he could give Tony Robbins a run for his money.
As he’s leaving my office, Godfrey asks me to help direct his car out of the tight parking lot. “I should back up and veer to the right side and then you can guide me out, right?”, he asks, haltingly, the only time I have ever seen him hesitant. Ahh, so there is something that Paul can’t do.
“No, no, I’ve got this”, I tell him, “I’m going to guide you to go straight back out of the lot, no veering to the right, and then take a hard turn to the left”. As I direct Paul, he easily gets out of the lot.
“That was great Sharon”, he tells me enthusiastically, adding, “you’re so good at this, I’m going to hire you at the Post!”. All of a sudden I feel like the dentist. “So I shouldn’t get my hopes up?”, I yell after him, “what you’re offering me is a job parking cars, right?”
He lets out his huge belly laugh as he pulls away.
COMPARE THESE PHOTOS – ONE TAKEN A FEW YEARS AGO, 2014, GREAT PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPTHER – DID SHE PHOTOSHOP? OR IS IT LIGHTING, BEST ANGLE, GOOD MAKEUP?…HMMM.
SECOND PHOTO BELOW TAKEN THIS YEAR 2024 BY MY SON LUKE, NO PHOTOSHOP, EYELIDS DROOPING, BROKEN NOSE, NO MAKEUP….. WHICH ONE DO I LIKE BEST?
Luke has been looking forward to Father’s Day for a long time now. His card is carefully painted and signed, and he’s got a long list of plans for the big day. Luke is always taking about his dad, but especially around Father’s Day.
“Mom, remember that long hike Dad and I took through the forest? We were gone all day, and you were so worried we were lost.” “Oh Luke”, I say, “you were only three then. How can you remember that hike?” But he does remember.
Luke and his dad were always together, fishing, hiking, planting in the garden – days that Luke loves to recall. I guess it’s not that unusual for a nine-year-old to be so crazy about his dad, but Luke’s dad died in a car accident more than five years ago.
Who would have thought that a three-year-old would not only remember, but cherish, the short time he and his dad had together? Everyone told me that Luke would forget – but everyone was wrong. Noone stopped to think about that larger-than-life bond between father and son.
I have watched as Luke’s mind adapted to life without a dad. But Father’s Day is still a big challenge.
I thought I had licked the problem years ago with my Band-Aid solution called Brother’s Day. The boys exchanged gifts and went to Canada’s Wonderland – whatever it took to escape the real meaning of the day. “Brilliant,” I thought at the time. but Brother’s Day came to a crashing halt last year when Luke announced: “Mom, other kids don’t celebrate Brothers Day – it’s really Father’s Day!” He assumed I simply didn’t know. Why else would I ignore Father’s Day?
Luke also confided that he had overheard some kids in school whispering that he would have nothing to do on Father’s Day, since he had no dad.
At first I was angry, but then I realized that I was as guilty as those kids, since five years earlier I had taken the “father” out of Luke’s Father’s Day, hoping to save him from the hurt and pain.
“But I want to celebrate Father’s Day”, Luke told me, and I realized that my little boy was growing up.
it was so much easier to deal with the toddler who said the funniest things in his attempts to understand the situation. At his father’s funeral, he’d indignantly noted that something was missing. “Where’s Dad?”, he mused,”why isn’t he here? I thought he’d be at his own funeral.”
I remembered the little boy who greeted his friend shortly after his dad died, yelling: “Kathleen, Kathleen! You won’t believe what happened! My hamster died and so did my dad.”
“What happened to the hamster?”, Kathleen relied.
The hamster was quickly forgotten, but not Luke’s dad. There were always signs that his dad was on Luke’s mind.
At a party one day, Luke blurted out, “My daddy’s dead…” All conversation stopped as embarrassed guests looked toward Luke. I gulped. “…but my mom’s realllly alive!”, he continued, saving the moment and giving me a description to live up to.
For a while, whenever the phone rang, Luke would yell, “I’ll bet it’s Dad!” One Christmas Eve when Santa – my dad – called to talk to the kids, Luke hung up on him saying, “I can’t believe that Santa didn’t put Dad on the phone.” I guess in a little boy’s mind, Santa’s workshop is as close to heaven as you can get.
But those days are long gone. Luke isn’t that little boy anymore. The easy Band-aid solutions don’t work. So what to do about Father’s Day? Well, since Luke has decided he wants to celebrate Father’s Day, we will be doing what he wants to do, what everyone else will be doing that day, honouring Dad.
And I think that it’s time for Luke’s classmates to realize what his mom has finally figured out, something Luke has known all along: that he does have a father, a wonderful father who’s alive and well and living in a little boy’s heart.
Amazing brace Why aren’t Canadian parents told about a Montreal invention used around the world to treat scoliosis?
Sharon Dunn, January 23, 2008 | MacLeans Magazine, edited by author Jan 16, 2024
‘Scoliosis’ – welcome to a lifetime of pain‘ was the dramatic greeting I got when I typed that one word into my search engine.
It all started innocently enough in 2001 when Jay, then 16, complained of a sore back. His back looked fine to me, but I took him to the paediatrician to be sure. “Your son has scoliosis, and now it’s too late,” the doctor told me, going on to explain that scoliosis, a sideways curvature of the spine, if caught while a child is still growing, can be treated with a brace to reduce the curve, or a surgically implanted rod to straighten the spine. We were referred to the Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto, where Jay was diagnosed with adolescent idiopathic (of no known cause) scoliosis, or AIS, the most common type of curvature of the spine.
During that first meeting, the surgeon said to my son, “If you ask me three times, I’ll do surgery.” Confused, I asked him what he meant. “I wasn’t talking to you,” the surgeon scolded. Intimidated, not a common trait of mine, I backed down. Even though my son was still a minor, I apparently had no say in the matter. When we left the hospital, my teenager said casually, “Well, I guess I’ll have fusion.” The surgeon had succeeded in making spinal fusion sound like a trip to the park. I soon found out that nothing could be further from the truth. Spinal fusion, introduced in 1911, is still one of the most dangerous surgeries performed today. Complications are surprisingly common and can include fusion failure, infections, numbness, and, more rarely, paralysis and even death. “Successful” surgeries have their own issues, mainly chronic pain, and more operations. Medical professionals may call it the gold standard in scoliosis surgery, but except in cases where it is absolutely necessary (serious spinal curves can lead to heart and lung problems), I couldn’t find anything golden about spinal fusion.
I was relieved when surgery wasn’t recommended for Jay after all. Following the visit to Sick Kids, we received a letter from the pediatric surgeon we had seen: “No treatment warranted at this time,” it said, though “lower posterior fusion may be necessary in the future due to pain or progression of curvature.” How could there be no treatment warranted, I wondered. Were we supposed to do nothing until surgery was needed?
I was writing for the National Post then and had managed to snag an interview with actress Isabella Rossellini, in town for the Toronto International Film Festival. Since time with her was limited, I cut to the chase. “I’ve read you have scoliosis. My son has it too,” I blurted out. A startled Rossellini sternly replied, “Don’t ever let him get the surgery.” She went on to explain she’d had spinal fusion and had been in pain ever since. The few minutes we spent together, she talked emotionally about her scoliosis, while her handlers flailed. This discussion wasn’t exactly what they’d had in mind. As she was being dragged away, her parting words were, “Remember, no surgery.”
Increasingly concerned, I sought out Dr. Walter Bobechko, a highly respected Canadian scoliosis surgeon who had relocated years earlier to practise in Dallas, Texas (he has since died). Through a mutual friend, he agreed to see Jay while he was visiting in Toronto. After his examination, the expert echoed Rossellini’s advice: “Don’t ever let anyone do surgery on your son.” He said that since Jay’s curves were under 40 degrees, and more importantly, since he was a male (curves are more likely to increase in females), he was at low risk for progression. “He’s one of the lucky ones,” I was told.
But Jay didn’t feel lucky. Although some scoliosis sufferers have no pain, his back pain was progressing relentlessly. Painkillers would often now appear on his bedside table when he was home from university. “My back is killing me, Ma,” he would tell me, but it would be almost three years before he would admit that the pain was constant — and almost intolerable. He had been trying to keep it from me so I wouldn’t worry. “This is seriously affecting my quality of life,” he finally confessed. His doctor’s solution had been to prescribe ever-more-powerful pain medications, medications that in spite of their devastating side effects weren’t solving the pain issues. In the prime of his life, my son was almost disabled from back pain.
I frantically searched for a solution, only to discover that the conventional treatment options in Canada are confusing, antiquated and controversial, even though AIS affects up to three per cent of the adolescent population, with one per cent going on to need treatment. It is one of the leading orthopaedic problems in children and tends to run in families. Mild curves under 25 degrees are virtually ignored in this country, except for a “wait and watch” policy. Beyond that, treatment options get downright scary. The traditional braces that are prescribed look like something from an ancient torture chamber. The TLSO (Boston-style brace) and the Charleston (nighttime) brace consist of a hard shell that extends from under the arms to the hips. The Milwaukee brace, used since the 1940s, is even worse: metal rods jut out from neck to waist. These were the braces my son was too late for? It is hardly surprising that many teens refuse to wear these ungodly contraptions, prompting one surgeon to tell me, “We’re getting away from bracing kids in Canada altogether, and going straight from ‘wait and watch’ to surgery.” The more I found out about scoliosis, the more frightened I became.
Online forums at the National Scoliosis Foundation’s website (NSF is a patient-driven, non-profit organization out of Boston; no such foundation exists in Canada) only added to my angst — heart-wrenching stories written by young people struggling to cope with the disabling pain of scoliosis. One teen, describing a constant state of mental fog from her prescribed narcotic drugs, and desperately seeking an alternative, begged for help; a young store manager described pain so excruciating he was forced to periodically collapse on the backroom floor of his workplace to try to get relief. He feared he would be fired — or be forced to quit. There were complaints about doctors who wouldn’t take pain seriously, doctors who said scoliosis didn’t cause pain. We’d heard that one before. Some older, more resigned scoliosis sufferers offered words of encouragement to the distressed teens, even as they themselves talked about years of constant, daily pain, operations, re-operations, and eventual disability. Good Lord, maybe my son really was headed for a lifetime of pain.
Heartbroken fo Jay, I hopped a plane to California where Jay was then living so I could try to help. An appointment with another top scoliosis surgeon, this one in L.A., turned up nothing new. Jay didn’t need surgery yet, we were told, and he shouldn’t be having so much pain. Here we go again, I thought as I caught Jay’s frustrated gaze. I was overwhelmed by the hopelessness of his situation. In my hotel room that night, after the dinner Jay could hardly sit through because of the pain, I began surfing “chronic pain management.” I couldn’t believe it had come to this, but there seemed to be no other solution. A pain clinic in Los Angeles popped up, touting a flexible scoliosis brace for children — and adults. A brace for adults? I was surprised to learn that the brace had been invented at Sainte-Justine’s Hospital in Montreal. Why had I never heard of it? The next morning I called Sainte-Justine’s and got through to one of the inventors, Dr. Charles Hilaire Rivard, a research scientist, orthopaedic surgeon and former head of surgery at the Université de Montréal. “Will your brace help my son?” I asked desperately, after telling him Jay’s story. “Yes, it will,” he replied confidently. The brace, called SpineCor, an elaborate system of elastic bands, applied with the use of software designed for each individual curve, had been created for 10- to 16-year-old children with AIS and was now being used on adults to relieve back pain. Since Jay was living in California, Rivard recommended Dr. David Gorrie, one of several California chiropractors who had been trained in fitting the brace by the Sainte-Justine’s team. “He’s scientific, and he won’t overcharge you,” Rivard promised. I was hopeful, but Jay, who had tried everything from acupuncture to physiotherapy, Thai massage, vibrating chairs, yoga, Pilates, and even Dr. Ho’s massage therapy (I gave it to him one Christmas), was skeptical. After all, I had discovered the brace on the Internet. “If I end up looking like Quasimodo . . . ” he threatened. But desperate for pain relief, he decided to try it, and on April Fool’s Day, 2007, was fitted with the brace to the tune of US$3,500. On April 2, feeling like a fool, I flew back to Toronto with her fingers crossed.
Within a couple of days, a disbelieving Jay reported that his daily back pain was subsiding — dramatically. And after a couple of weeks, the chronic pain that he had suffered for years was virtually gone. The brace was retraining his muscles, and in doing so, correcting painful postural problems caused by the asymmetry of his spine. My son was finally painfree for the first time in six years. I was elated, but miffed. Why hadn’t I heard about this great Canadian invention that had helped my son so much? I went to Sainte-Justine’s in Montreal to find out.
“Maybe the reason you’ve never heard of the brace [used in Quebec since 1993] is because they don’t want to use it in the rest of Canada,” Dr. Rivard told me bluntly. The SpineCor brace is used in 18 countries, including England, France, Germany, Australia, Spain, Switzerland and the U.S., but not in “English” Canada. Ten thousand children have been treated with the brace; it is distributed out of the U.K. worldwide. “No one in Canada wanted it,” an exasperated Rivard said.
A $12-million grant from the Quebec government in 1992 enabled Rivard to get the brace off the ground, and to begin research on the development of new instrumentation to be used in the place of fusion. The intellectual property rights for the brace are owned by Sainte-Justine’s.
Rivard credits his colleague Dr. Christine Collaird for coming up with the idea for the brace that, he says, “is keeping kids out of surgery.” Collaird, a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon who studied the biomechanics of the spine for 10 years and spent another four years developing SpineCor, said, “Unlike traditional braces, there is no muscle atrophy, and no side effects.” Rivard added that the “dynamic” SpineCor “uses the muscles. It’s like being in physiotherapy 24/7.”
The brace has been used on adults for only about two years, the goal being pain relief not straightening since the spine is mature. “No one thought it would help adults,” said Collaird. Still, Rivard admits that the brace doesn’t work for everyone. He continues to use the Milwaukee brace on children when the SpineCor won’t hold a large curve, and says that when a growing child gets beyond a 50-degree scoliosis curve, surgery becomes almost unavoidable. “Every time I fuse a child, I feel bad,” the Montreal doctor told me as his eyes welled up.
“It’s been so long and so difficult,” Collaird confided, as she rushed toward him with tissues. “Tell people I just want to help kids,” Rivard said. “I know it’s a complicated brace, but it works. Why aren’t the others using it?” Back in “English” Canada, I contacted Dr. Ben Alman, head of the orthopaedic division, and AIS specialist, at the Hospital for Sick Children, to find out why the hospital doesn’t use the Quebec brace. “The reason SpineCor isn’t used here is not because it is good or bad,” Alman told me. “It’s a financial issue. OHIP [Ontario’s health insurance plan] doesn’t cover it.” Hard braces are covered “at least partially,” he said. Are parents really not being told about this brace because of the cost? Alman added, “Part of the problem is that the brace is too new to know for certain long-term results.”
But the Canadian brace is not “too new” for two of the most prestigious children’s orthopaedic hospitals in the U.S. The SpineCor is used at the renowned Shriners Hospital for Children in Erie, Penn., and at the famous Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md. Dr. Paul Sponseller at Johns Hopkins believes that the SpineCor brace “works for smaller curves, in patients who are very diligent about wear.” Although Sponseller also said that some patients do not respond to any kind of bracing, he added, “I have had some noticeable successes as well, preventing surgery in patients who may well have needed it.” Dr. James Sanders is the former chief of staff at Shriners and is now professor and chief of pediatric orthopaedics at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y. “While I do like the theories of the SpineCor,” he said, “it needs good testing to know if it is any more than just a nice-sounding theory.” Both Sanders and Alman refer to studies now under way to determine if any of the braces currently in use really work.
Some experts believe the best chance of avoiding surgery is in diagnosing curves early. In the U.S., school screenings are done in many states. Girls are generally screened in the fifth and eighth grade, and boys in the eighth or ninth grade. The method used is the Adams forward-bending test: the child bends over to a 90-degree angle while the examiner, standing behind, compares both sides of the back, looking for asymmetry, like a protruding shoulder blade. When the child stands up straight, the screener can also check for unequal shoulders, or an uneven waist. If a problem is noted, the child is referred to a doctor. Canada has no such screenings in public schools.
Many doctors think school screening is a waste of time, since they don’t believe there is an effective conservative treatment for scoliosis. Rivard disagrees. “I believe finding curves earlier, while they’re smaller and treatable, will keep some children out of surgery.” According to Rivard, fewer fusions are done in Europe due to their rehabilitative approach to scoliosis. “In Europe, the first line of defence for scoliosis is rehabilitative therapy. In Canada, the first referral is to a surgeon,” he says.
At Sick Kids Hospital, Dr. Alman told me that scoliosis patients with curves too small for traditional treatment (under 25 to 30 degrees) are now routinely referred to the hospital’s on-staff physiotherapist — but not for any active treatment. “Mainly to wait and watch and keep an eye on things,” he said. Joe O’Brien, president of the National Scoliosis Foundation, is appalled at that. “I’ve never understood the logic of ‘wait and watch,’ ” he told me indignantly. Also a supporter of school screening, O’Brien, who had his first scoliosis surgery at the age of 16, and four subsequent surgeries, said, “The only operation I regret was the first — it created all the problems that made the following surgeries necessary.” O’Brien has three children with scoliosis and has managed to keep them all out of surgery: one using the SpineCor. Asked about the Quebec brace, he said, “It did what it was supposed to do [hold the curve and prevent surgery].”
SpineCor also did what it was supposed to do for Valerie Goulet, a second-year journalism student at Université de Montréal who was fitted with the brace at the age of 15 due to a painful 25-degree curve. She wore it the recommended 21 hours a day for 18 months, and said, “I didn’t mind at all. I even had a boyfriend.” Before being fitted with the SpineCor, Goulet had been told she might eventually need surgery. “And that I must wear a hard brace,” she said. “I cried and cried.” Long out of the brace, her curve is stable at only 12 degrees (anything under 10 degrees is so mild it’s not even considered scoliosis). “I am so thankful that I met Dr. Rivard,” she said.
In the course of my research for this story, I made several unannounced visits to the busy Sainte-Justine’s spine clinic, randomly speaking with parents and patients, some in treatment, some in follow-up. Those I spoke with were grateful and had nothing but praise for the Quebec doctors. All were success stories. I also met 13-year-old Esme Tremblay from Ottawa, who might not be as lucky. Her worried parents, Michael and Ruth, told me that although their daughter’s curves were discovered three years ago, when they measured under 20 degrees, nothing was done until they advanced enough for a cumbersome hard brace, a brace Esme, like most youngsters, found too uncomfortable to wear. With Esme’s curves now measuring more than 50 degrees, Ruth, who recently discovered SpineCor on the Internet, said, “We’re getting in the game really late, so I’m not sure the brace is going to work.” Rivard has given Esme only a 15 per cent chance of success because of the large size of her curves. But the Tremblays want to try the brace anyway. “The Ottawa surgeon who recommended fusion for Esme downplayed the seriousness of the operation,” an upset Ruth told me. “He gave me the impression that it was no big deal.” Ruth begged me not to reveal the doctor’s name, “because we might need to go back to him for the surgery.” The Tremblays are looking for answers. “Why weren’t we told about SpineCor by our doctors?” Ruth wants to know.
Although there is increasing evidence that the SpineCor brace works for some people, Canadian doctors outside of Quebec continue to ignore it. Are some Canadian children undergoing spinal fusion that could have been averted if the Quebec brace had been prescribed? Rivard says that 78 per cent of his SpineCor patients are either stabilized or improved after SpineCor treatment, with 22 per cent going on to need surgery. Without the brace, he believes that at least 40 per cent would need fusion.
Nine months after being fitted with SpineCor, Jay is still pain-free, and calls the brace “bloody brilliant.” He refers to the inventors as “those geniuses from Quebec.”I’m so grateful, and was so excited about Jay’s pain relief, that I left phone messages for the Toronto and L.A. surgeons we had seen, offering to provide details about the brace so they could help other patients. Neither doctor ever called me back. I asked Rivard what would have happened to Jay if we hadn’t discovered SpineCor. “He would have wanted surgery,” Rivard said, shaking his head. “The pain from scoliosis can be that bad.”
Online, a 19-year-old California teen asks, “Has anyone else had success with SpineCor?” Also fitted with the brace by Dr. Gorrie, he says, “This is the first time I’ve been able to sit comfortably for years.” A 55-year-old woman who couldn’t stand and who was in constant pain until she was fitted with SpineCor, says she is now pain-free, her posture perfect.
Meanwhile, although not even on the radar in Canada, Rivard’s and Collaird’s work continues to gain respect worldwide, with some patients travelling to Montreal from as far away as San Francisco and overseas for treatment. Ruth Tremblay of Ottawa is resentful. “Why weren’t we given the chance by our doctors?” she asks, adding wistfully, “And we were only a two-hour drive away.”
Writers update below December 2024
After I wrote this story, studies were carried out in North America to test if bracing would work. The results were so dramatic, that the study was discontinued so that the control group of children who were not in braces, could get braced. Early results had showed that the children who were braced were having much better results than the unbraced control group.
Since then, a number of braces, including Spinecor, are now widely used in Canada and the U.S. for the treatment of scoliosis resulting in straighter spines for some children, and keeping many out of surgery. Bracing is now used for adults as well. Although too late to straighten the adult spine, bracing can help to lessen or eliminate pain, as in my son’s case.
For years my name was in Wikipedia under the heading of back brace as the number one reference. I’m now down around the bottom, number 7, with scientists and researchers ahead of me, as it should be. I am happy that I was on the right side of history, and that many kinds of braces are now used widely for scoliosis in North America. Check out wikipedia back brace and you can see the kinds of braces that are in use. If you would like to discuss, contact me at sharondunncom@gmail.com. I still get emails from people who have read the article and were helped by the brace. Best of luck! Bracing won’t help everyone but it helps many…it’s worth a try.
