Federal Way girl back to active self after scoliosis surgery, bone graft

What was expected to be a routine physical for track turned into a painful 9-month ordeal for Federal Way teen Zamora Simpson this past year.

Not only was the Decatur High School student shocked to learn she had scoliosis, a sideways curvature of the spine, she was also told she needed X-rays immediately to assess the problem.

After the X-rays came news she would need to have back surgery.

“I was just surprised because I just went into a routine checkup so I could do track,” Simpson said. “… I don’t think I really understood that it was severe.”

The then-15-year-old’s May 2016 diagnosis revealed her spine looked like an “S” with a 75-degree upper curve to the right and a 45-degree lower curve to the left.

Simpson had noticed her shoulders were uneven, but she “brushed it off” and didn’t give it much thought. At that time, she was not in any pain. That soon changed, however.

During the four months she waited to have her back surgery, her spine’s curvature got worse by 10 degrees bringing the top curve to 85 degrees, a significant change in such a short amount of time. Simpson had decided to run track her last quarter of school, but running soon became painful.

“My hips were hurting because my hips were so uneven, and my curve was getting worse really quickly, so I still ran, but it was extremely painful,” she said.

Simpson said she’d try to alleviate her pain with an electrical heating pack, Tylenol and her favorite TV show.

After watching countless YouTube videos about girls with scoliosis, reading articles and soaking up as much information as she could, Simpson said she was as prepared as she could be for her spinal fusion, which took place in early September.

In a six-hour surgery, doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital used two rods and several screws to align her spine to become straighter. Doctors also used bone graft tissue from Renton-based LifeNet Health to promote bone growth in the areas where the screws were.

“It’s really important for that bone to fuse and for that bone to grow effectively in such a way that it stabilizes her spine,” Levi Anderson, general manager at LifeNet Health in Renton, said. “So, in this case, we would be using a number of different bone grafting materials, some to provide a fill for the void, which is typically a cancellous bone.”

Cancellous bone is often found at the end of the femur or at the core of vertebral bones in the spine and is described as the “meshwork of spongy tissue” of adult bone, according to Spine-health.

In those situations, Anderson said the clinician or surgeon would use a specific type of bone grafting material that would be for a scoliosis allograft, a graft from someone who is not genetically identical.

A global health care organization, LifeNet Health is the only full-service tissue bank in the Pacific Northwest that recovers, prepares and distributes tissue for transplantation, medical research and education, Anderson said. In 2016, LifeNet received donations from 600 families and served 40,000 patients like Simpson.

Anderson said LifeNet Heath collects tissues from organ donors, which are identified through the Washington donor registry, and has partnered with hospitals, law enforcement and funeral homes for donation recovery.

It took Simpson months to fully recover from her back surgery, which included relearning how to walk, but she’s back to her active self, swimming on Decatur’s swim team and looking forward to trying out for tennis in the spring.

“I don’t know anything about the family or the person who had to pass away so I could have this life-changing surgery,” Simpson said. “All I know is it was through LifeNet. … In a sense, it kind of did save my life because if I had not had the surgery, then my back (curvature) would have continued to progress and then one of my lungs could have collapsed.”

For more information about how to donate critically-needed heart valves or common anterior cruciate ligaments, posterior cruciate ligaments or meniscus tissue, visit www.lifenethealth.org.