Article content

Roberto Miranda remembers it as a regular spring day in May 2021. His daughter Olivia remembers it more specifically as Mother’s Day, just before setting out for dinner with her Laval family.

She was 12, an avid soccer player, and was doing stretches her dad had recommended to ease the back pain she’d recently told him about.

Article content

“I looked at her bent over and saw a lump on one side near her shoulder blades,” Miranda says. “I felt it, and it was hard like bone.”

Article content

She’d worn a backless dress at her confirmation the year before and there had been nothing. He thought, “How did we not notice this?” He tried not to show Olivia his panic, but later at soccer practice, he pointed it out to a fellow parent who is a nurse.

“When she saw it, her face changed,” Miranda says. “She said, ‘This is a scoliosis. This is a serious case’.”

Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine. The National Scoliosis Foundation says it occurs in three to four children out of every 1,000. Miranda compares it with pulling a string through something that is too short to accommodate it — it will shift and bend the material.

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis is often diagnosed when a child is between 10 and 13 years old, according to Dr. Neil Saran, an orthopedic surgeon at the Shriners Children’s in Montreal. There is a large genetic or hereditary component, with a high incidence in patients with siblings or mothers with scoliosis, though Miranda says he does not know of any other cases in their family.

Treatment varies depending on type and severity of the curvature, Saran says.

Article content

Article content

“If the curve is moderate or mild, we consider bracing them to prevent progression and there is good evidence that it prevents progression while they’re still growing,” he says.

Olivia went to the Montreal Children’s Hospital, then the Shriners. Miranda says he and Olivia, along with mom Maria Clemente and younger sister Gloria, discussed options and were worried about soccer, which Olivia has played from the time she was three years old. He says their doctor told them, “Listen, she’s 12. If she was on Team Canada, I would suggest putting off the surgery. Will she have limitations? It’s impossible to say. She has spinal fusion, so there could be a loss of flexibility. If she’s going to make it, she’ll find a way.”

Olivia took that as a challenge. She told her family she was looking forward to it. Immediately after the surgery, she said, “I did it, Dad. I did it.”

Then the hard work began. Olivia hadn’t been expecting to be in so much pain, or that she’d have to relearn how to walk on the second day, but she had soccer on her mind: “I never doubted myself. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to prove I could do it.”

Article content

On the fourth day after surgery, she and her dad were kicking a ball around her hospital room. Miranda says the nurses were astonished and called her a record-breaker. Her teammates made her a giant card that said: “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.”

Very soon she was playing ball in the house and visiting soccer practices so she wouldn’t lose her connections with her teammates. Three months later, she was playing with her team, with no contact. Six months later, she was 100 per cent back and her team came in third during the 2022 Jeux du Québec. They went on to play an all-star game at Saputo Stadium that September. Miranda says it took a full year to regain what she had lost, with the help of a physiotherapist.

Olivia is 15 now and remains unstoppable. She was selected to play for Team Québec and her hope is that she one day plays professionally for Team Canada.

“There will always be curveballs,” Olivia says. “But you can do it. If you want something, never give up.”

Sign up for our awesome parenting and advice newsletter at montrealgazette.com/newsletters.

[email protected]

Article content

Article content