Young St. Luke's patient is ‘poster child’ for confronting scoliosis surgery and recovery

For the past 15 years or so, Dr. Jason Robison has worked as an orthopedic surgeon at St. Luke’s with a special interest in pediatric orthopedic care.

Scoliosis is an important part of his practice, and the vast majority of the scoliosis patients he sees and treats are adolescents. Some cases can be treated with bracing, but others require surgery. According to the CLEAR Scoliosis Institute, about 29,000 scoliosis surgeries are performed annually on adolescents.

Over time, Dr. Robison has seen that a patient’s attitude can have an impact on post-surgical success.

“To some degree, you can predict how people are going to do after surgery based on how they do beforehand,” Dr. Robison said. “What kind of goals do they have coming in? Those things translate to improvements.”

With that in mind, Dr. Robison felt pretty good about the post-surgical outcome for a recent patient: 13-year-old Charlee Stewart.

“She’s kind of the poster child for having a good attitude and crushing the recovery,” Dr. Robison said.

Charlee knew more about scoliosis than the average adolescent because her older brother, Chase, had been diagnosed and treated by Dr. Robison.

“I first saw him at 15 or 16,” Dr. Robison said. “He was athletic, and kind of a role model when it comes to how fast you get up and walk (after surgery). … He’s 19 now, and he’s actually a firefighter.”

Though the preferred treatment is a nonsurgical option, it was clear to Dr. Robison that it would be necessary to treat surgically. When it came time for Charlee to have surgery she asked her brother how many laps he’d been able to walk around the nurses’ station.

“She made a point of beating him in regard to the effort during the post-operative period,” Dr. Robison said. “So, that shows the kind of spunky, competitive person that she is.”

Charlee’s mother, Traci Beckley, is all too familiar with Charlee’s competitiveness.

“I think she ended up doing 10 more laps, just to put an exclamation point on it,” Beckley said.

After Chase was diagnosed with scoliosis, Beckley learned that the condition tends to run in families. Years before, Beckley discovered she had scoliosis while giving birth to Chase.

“So, we were more proactive with Charlee,” Beckley said. “But, unfortunately, hers was so aggressive because she was so active.”

Charlee is an avid softball player who is the star pitcher on her team and has been named the Eastern Elmore Softball League MVP (she and her family live in Hammett, a small town near Glenns Ferry).

It was important to Charlee that she’d be able to continue playing softball after her surgery. The procedure, along with advancements in technology, still meant a thorough recovery, but also allows more mobility than a similar one even a decade ago. She intends to keep playing and hopes to be a part of the Glenns Ferry High School program as a freshman this fall.

“That’s why we wanted to have Charlee tell her story,” Beckley said. “You can be diagnosed with scoliosis and you’re going to be fine.”

Charlee said she actually experience less pain when playing softball now.