The picture below is posted in memory of my lovely wife Teresa who passed away in the early hours of October 8 after a long struggle with respiratory failure and scoliosis. She was born in 1945 in Lancshire, England and we married in 1974..

St Malo 1989, Teri and I teaching the French how to do good looking ...


 

Teresa's spinal problem, kypho – scoliosis (a double curvature on the spine, both lateral and convex,) was diagnosed at age eight after her brother Michael noticed one of his little sister's legs was thinner than the other. After consultations with local experts she was referred to the Robert Jones Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospial, Oswestry, Shropshire, where she was among the first to benefit from pioneering spinal surgery techniques which were being implemented under the supervision of Professor Robert Roaf.

Prof. Roaf developed new methods of operating through the chest to correct convex spinal deformities from the front and a type of spinal fusion, following a perios of using a brace attached to skull and pelvis to halt lateral curvature. After much resistance, his methods became accepted worldwide as standard procedure. Years later he commented: "Heretics, especially in medicine, are never welcome."

The treatment in Oswestry lasted over a year and involved young Teresa enduring several months in a full body cast with a metal rig screwed into her skeleton as doctors tried to reduce the curvature. Roaf's innovations may have annoyed the medical establishment but were certainly welcomed by Teresa's family and friends, as the therapy enabled her to lead a near normal ife according to a study of like expectancy in patients of her generation with similar progressive spinal problems show death usually occur failure or heart failure) in the fourth or fifth decade of life and that only five people from the 629 patients⁽¹⁾.

So that puts my brave lady in the top one per cent of survivors of this complex condition. Yeat another reason to be proud of her.

After leaving school Teresa worked as a sales assistant in a pharmacy and several other shops, but because of her problems never expected to marry until we met. I was aware from the start my wife had had serious back problems early in her life; her spine looked like the road map of a route through the mountains and was held together by various bits of metal, but I was not aware of how severe the problems would become until years later and I don;t think Teri herself had much idea of the likely consequences in later life. She certainly did not let her spinal abnormality stop her living a full life and being a brilliant mother to David and Gabrielle.

A few years ago, when we were reminiscing about our years together she said something I will always treasure: “You brought things into my life I never dared hope for, nobody thought any man would marry me, if I even lasted long enough to marry, then there are the children, and material things, a lovely house, classy cars, foreign travel, trips to London to go to the theatre and stay in 4 star hotels ...”

She gave me a lot too, looking past her structural problems she was intelligent, funny, supportive of everything I did, tolerant of my faults and as the picture shows, a very beautiful woman. And a kindred spirit, something I had almost given up hope of finding.

(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC470856/pdf/thorax00157-0112.pdf