Brooke Beecham

After we moved to TN from MS I changed orthopedic doctors, I went to one in Memphis for a couple years. Until my sister had a four wheeler wreck and broker her back in three places and they sent her to Vandy, which is where I met my favorite Dr. Gregory Mencio. I love this man...LOL He then became my "back doctor". He took me out of the brace, which is one reason I LOVE HIM, He told my parents and I that there was no need in wearing it anymore because of two reasons. Those reasons were, 1. I wasn't keeping food down at all and had gained only a few pounds in several years, I weighed only 45 at 9 years old, and 2. it wasn't slowing the severity of my curve down. So I walked out of that office in love! lol He told me that I would prolly have to have surgery but they wanted to wait as long as they could so I would have some time to grow! (this all took place about 1998) I seen him about every 6 months until January of 2000. In January of 2000 my curve had progressed to a 65 degree curve and they could no longer run the risk of this damaging my "good lung". So 3 weeks later I had my first back surgery on Febuary 9th, 2000 I was 12 years old! I went to sleep at 4'9 and woke up at about 5'0 to 5'1 I gain about 3 and a half to 4 inches in 4 hours. That was the most painful experience that I could remember! I laid naked in my hospital bed for 3 days because I couldn't stand for anyone to touch me, breath on me, or walk near my bed. I could be asleep and feel someone walk into my room, because of the vibrations on the floor. It was horrid! During this surgery they inserted 2 metal herrington rods into my back they measured 12 inches and the other was 11 and a half inches. I recovered realitively quilckly from that surgery! I had the very best posture after the fact! Then later in that year my GERD and Acid Reflux began to worsen and nothing was helping I finally found me a docter in Jackson TN his name was Dr. Laman I like him as well! He put me on Prevacid 15 mg twice a day. I believe that medicine was made in heaven, for the first time in my life I didn't have heartburn. But this wonderful medicine only worked for a few months and he began to have to try all other kinds, nothing was helping anymore. So he did an endoscopy to look down my esophagus and sure-nuff I had erosions and my esophagus never closed at the bottom so everything I ate went to my stomach turned into acid and came RIGHT back up, they just knew i had precancer on my esophogus called Barretts Esophogus. But it wasn't it was just REALLY REALLY close, to close for comfort. So Dr. Laman sent me to another man I love very much, Dr John Brooks Pietsch. Dr. Pietsch did my first nissen on March the 14th of 2001, he had to do an open nissen because I had to much scar tissue to do a laproscopic one. A surgery that was suppose to last only an hour ended up lasting 6 because he had to work through mounds of scar tissue and adhesions, for one month after surgery I wasn't able o eat solid food because it would run the risk of destroying all the work he had done, which was wrapping a portion of my stomach muscle around my esophogus and repairing my hiatal hernia. After the month of no solids, I was perfect NO MORE heartburn, no more zantac, reglan, nexium, prilosec, or prevacid. I felt GREAT I started gaining weight. Which was Wonderful I still didn't weigh what I was suppose to but I weighed like 75-78 lbs. It was heaven! In April of 2001 I was still having horrible ear infections in my right ear, so they sent me to Dr. Randy Lazar in Memphis who placed my tubs at 3, the tubes never fell out of my right ear. So he put me to sleep to remove my ear tube. Then they had to do another Endoscopy because my esophagus was TOO tight, they went through my throat and stretched it a little. I think in 2001 I was put to sleep 7 times. In 2002 I started having some problems breathing and my back was starting to hurt real bad where the protruding hump was, because of the many years of scoliosis. So on December 31st of 2001 I had my second back surgery performed by Dr. Gregory Mencio. He went in and removed 6 inches from 6 of my ribs on the right side to give my lung a little room to expand and to reduce the apperance of the hump. In 2002 I began to have GERD again that wasn't able to be controlled with medicine, so they did another upper GI, I had to have upper GIs every year from the time I was a baby until I was about 7 years old and then I have had to have the periodically since then as well. On the upper GI they were able to see that the "nissen" had come unattached. They scheduled my second open nissen fundoplycation for Dec 11, 2002 a week after I was in the office. This surgery was successful, again it took about 4 houra rather than 1 hour to perform because of the scar tissue.