Curved spine op has Kelly dancing again

When keen dancer Kelly Burrows found out she had a curved spine and would need a nine-hour operation, she thought her ambition of performing ballet on pointe shoes was crushed.

But barely a year after the operation, she is now a proud owner of the shoes and is rehearsing to perform at Wolverhampton's Grand Theatre with Coppice Performing Arts School.

Kelly, aged 16, of Caernarvon Close, New Invention, was 14 when she tried on a dance costume and her mother, Wendy, 39, noticed a hump in the right side of her back, and her shoulder blades were uneven.

After tests she was diagnosed with scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, but since the curve was only mild, Kelly held out the hope that it would not get any worse and she could continue with her dancing.

But over six months the curve got progressively worse until she had a 65 degree curve in her spine, which was flat at the base instead of having a natural curve.

Her consultant at Woodlands Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, Birmingham, broke it to her that the only way to rectify the problem was surgery, and in March 2009 Kelly went under the knife.

Wendy and husband Steve, 43, spent the nine hours with bated breath as surgeons removed their daughter's lower rib to gain access to her spine and fuse titanium rods to either side of it.

Wendy said: "It was really scary.

"There was always a risk of her being paralysed because they were working along the spinal cord.

"It was frightening, it was such a relief when they told us she was OK.

"She made it a lot easier for us because she was so positive."

She added: "She can't bend as much as she used to, or curl up, but she has wonderful posture and she is so much more confident.

"We want people to be aware of it, if someone else is going through this she could help them, because we didn't know anything about it before."

Now back with her friends at Coppice Performing Arts School, where her sister, Sally, 14, also attends, Kelly said that she is looking forward to the performance at the theatre in October, with an audience invited by the school.

She is training with the new shoes, which contain wooden blocks and require dancers to have a perfect posture. She said: "I have been dancing since I was five, my ambition was always to do pointe ballet ever since I was a little girl, and I didn't think I would ever be able to do it."

Her remarkable recovery has included the discovery that she had gained an extra two inches in height, resulting in a whole new wardrobe, and attended her prom in a gown she said she never imagined she would be able to wear before her operation.