Swimmers share recovery stories 2 Bangor girls have same surgery

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BANGOR – Joanna McFarland and Sarah Nichols are both members of the Bangor High School swim team. They’re friends, Nichols and McFarland say, but on a 66-girl team, in a high school of almost 1,500 students, they don’t really know each other that well.

For example, Nichols didn’t know at first that she and McFarland were both operated on by the same doctor who performed surgery for scoliosis, a side-to-side curvature of the spine that frequently appears in adolescents.

McFarland had her surgery Aug. 11, 2005. Nichols followed about 10 months later, on June 27, 2006.

Both girls are well on their way to full recovery. McFarland, a senior, had to take her junior year off but is back swimming and racing full time.

Nichols, a junior, is allowed to be in the water but won’t be able to race this season because of the potential impact on her spine. Swimmers do flip turns in which they push off from the wall of the pool, dive off blocks several feet in the air, and hit the timing pads hard. Those impacts can be jarring.

Even though the girls aren’t as close as can be, they share a connection that has helped Nichols get through a season of sitting on the bleachers. Watching McFarland swim this winter has put Nichols at ease because she sees that a comeback is possible.

“I hate being out of the pool and watching everybody else,” said Nichols, standing with McFarland during a break from a recent meet at the Husson College pool in Bangor. “But you’ve gone through it and I can think, I’m not the only one.”

Scoliosis appears in 3 to 5 of every 1,000 children, according to the National Institutes of Health. Idiopathic scoliosis, or scoliosis of an unknown cause, is the most common and occurs after age 10. Girls are more likely to have this type of scoliosis.

Scoliosis is present when there is more than a 10 percent lateral deviation from the normal vertical line of the spine. Nichols had a 38 percent curve on top and 49 percent on the bottom. Although McFarland’s recollections have faded as her surgery has become a distant memory, she believes she had a 60 percent curve on the bottom and 48 percent on the top.

McFarland, who was in her bathing suit for the recent meet, has a faded long, thin scar running up and down her back. It’s so faint that if you aren’t looking for it, you might not see it. McFarland and Nichols said doctors try to put off surgery if possible, but neither could avoid it. McFarland was having trouble sitting and after trying a series of nighttime braces that didn’t seem to help and resisting a daytime brace, she knew she would need surgery.

Nichols wore a daytime brace from fifth to eighth grade. Without the brace Nichols had trouble standing for long periods of time. But she hated the plastic contraption.

“It gives you really big hips, so you have to get bigger pants sizes,” she said. “I looked like I was overdeveloped for sixth grade. People used to go up to my brace and knock on it, like, knock on the door. It’s kind of difficult.”

Eventually, Nichols too knew she would have to have an operation.

Not only did scoliosis give them a lot of discomfort, but both girls were swimming crooked.

McFarland said her former coach at the Canoe City Swim Club in Old Town noticed something was wrong. Nichols said the scoliosis made it tough for her to do certain strokes.

“My breaststroke progressively got worse and in my freestyle, I was always crooked and overreaching,” she said. “I couldn’t get my neck and my spine to align. We were having problems with that last year. I probably could have done better but my spine prevented me from doing that.”

Bangor coach Cindi Howard said she hasn’t discerned changes in McFarland’s swimming because she hadn’t seen her since her freshman year (McFarland elected not to swim for Bangor in her sophomore year). With Nichols, however, Howard has noticed a change in how she swims.

“I’m surprised they’re back in the water as soon as they are,” Howard said. “I was very surprised by that.”

In her time off McFarland chose to try other activities rather than stay around the team and was cleared to race in April, about nine months after her surgery. It wasn’t easy to get back into the water, however, which is a lesson Nichols will eventually learn.

“When you have surgery your endurance goes down to zero,” McFarland said. “So it’s been really hard getting back up there.”

Although the girls haven’t spent a lot of time discussing their surgeries or their struggles with scoliosis, they have found they shared some experiences.

“I was so itchy and I couldn’t even move for like three days,” Nichols said of her reaction to the anesthetic used in her surgery.

“Oh, I know,” McFarland responded. “My parents would, like, scratch my legs for me.”

Until the spring track and field starts – Nichols is going to try to do throws for the Bangor High team – she’s keeping busy as a manager this winter. Dressed in shorts and a team T-shirt from a previous season, she helped run Bangor’s first home meet, standing at the scorer’s table at the Husson pool.

Standing with McFarland, Nichols listened attentively as her teammate talked about her early limitations and lack of them now.

“At first I couldn’t go off the blocks or do flip turns and I had to stick to [freestyle],” McFarland said. “But when I got the OK in April to do everything, [the doctor] didn’t say anything about the different strokes. So now I’m doing everything.”

Nichols cheered for her teammates during the meet, but she still longs to get back into racing. The knowledge that McFarland has made a comeback is a comfort.

“If she can do fly,” Nichols said, “I can do fly.”