Spina Bifida Awareness

Spina Bifida is a spinal defect that you are born with. This means that a part of the fetus’s spine does not develop or “close” properly, and this usually occurs before a woman even knows she is pregnant. According to the Spina Bifida Association of America, this occurs 7 times for every 10,000 live births in the United States. There are four different types of Spina Bifida, Occult Spinal Dysraphism, Occulta, Meningocele, and Myelomeningocele or more commonly known as Cystica. Spina Bifida is often called the “Snowflake Condition” because it affects are different on everyone diagnosed with it.

            About 80% of people diagnosed with this defect have hydrocephalus and require more treatments, and this refers to shunts (a tube with a valve) which inserted to drain the fluid buildup around the brain caused by hydrocephalus. About 20% of those will need to receive more than one shunt revision surgery. Most shunt are inserted within days or weeks of the child’s birth.

            Spina Bifida is more common than Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular Dystrophy, and Multiple Sclerosis, combined together. The symptoms of the defect are very dependent on the severity of Spina Bifida. For mild cases there isn’t very many, and they might not be affected by this defect. The severe symptoms are as follows bladder problems (urine leaking), very little of no feeling at all of the legs feet or even arms (they might not be able to use these parts of their bodies), curved spine, and fluid buildup in the brain.

            This month is Spina Bifida Awareness Month, and in honor of that I decided to write this article because about 3 years ago my Aunt Nicole and her husband found out that their daughter Emily was diagnosed with one of the more severe cases of Spina bifida. She was diagnosed with Cystica, but that hasn’t slowed her down. She has two birth days one is her butt b-day, and the other is her actual b-day. Butt birthday means that she had the surgery where you are pulled out of your mother, and then they perform a surgery on the section of your spinal column that is affected. That surgery was first performed on the babies for free because this was a risk to put your child through this, and out of all the tester babies only one survived and that happens to be John Mellencamp, and he supports this cause as much as possible donating most of his money to the children who are going through Spina Bifida, even though he has one of the less severe cases.