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Welcome to dear old dads, the podcast that, hey, what you're thinking about?

I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen. Hello. What are you thinking about? I'm thinking about Phoebe's back brace. Are we going to get a brace update? Oh, man. Yeah. Brace date. Yeah, let's get a little update, not a full show or anything by any means. So yesterday, we finally had the appointment to get a brace, which is not easy to get. I guess fucking everybody has scoliosis now. I had it before. It's cool, but, you know, everybody has it now. And we got it. It's still not cool. Don't worry. Okay, good. The only appointment we could get was right when we were fucking going to record. so that was a whole thing. But anyway, we went to her appointment and, keep in mind, this is a six-year-old. She's in summer now, but she's going into second grade. And she has been pretty good with this, I think. You know, it's confusing to her. I think it's one of those things where, again, it's so hard because it's an invisible problem to her.

Like, I don't know that she can tell yet that she even has it because she's a kid. Kids are so not aware. It's weird to try to model in your mind what that would be like to just not really be aware of 100% of the world. You know, like they have such a weird focus. and so I don't think she's aware of this, really, in a way.

I will say it's affecting her right shoulder enough that she might start getting. Like it's, unfortunately, it's really curving it in. So I wonder that might be the first thing she like notices. I don't know. But maybe she won't. Maybe she'll never notice because she's a kid and she might just be like, this is normal.

Right. And so this is an invisible problem that is, I'm very worried because it's a problem that to her would be hard to convince her even exists.

And the thing she has to do for it is incredibly disruptive. It's like fucking what the right things climate change is.

You know, it's like, well, it's not real. And then, plus, you wanted me to stop using my gas lawnmower all day. So, like, that sucks. You know, but, like, it is a real problem and you do have to do this thing. So I've been worried, and we get there and she sees the brace. And I could tell right away maybe she wasn't expecting it to be quite as substantial as it is.

As girthy, yeah. Yeah, it's, I thought it was going to be, you know, maybe a little more invisible than it was, but the problem is she, it's pretty bad scoliosis. She has to have, it's not like a, oh, it's just a little

tiny thing that she, yeah, this isn't a minor correction. No, yes, it's, it's, so it's, it oh, it's just a little tiny thing that you know. Yeah, this isn't a minor correction. No, yeah. So it's a little substantial. And we first go in and she's, I could tell she was a little like, she was a little affected by that. And so we do the first try on. And the guy, the guy is great. He's like exactly the kind of person you'd want for this where it's like, this seems like it's all he ever does and he's nice about it and he knows. He has that sense of like he's done this a billion times. So here are all the tips and tricks with the stuff and the whatever. And so it's good. Like he's not a Dick Seaman. We don't have a Dick Seaman situation here. I like the idea that there's a new listener who's just like he's not a what? Yeah. Dick Seaman took away one of Eli's balls.

And added, no, he added a third ball. He did. He added a triple ball situation. Yeah. And so he's not

that. He seems really good. But she does the first try on and they make the brace obviously a little bit

big. They don't want if they make it small, then it's worthless. So they make the brace obviously a little bit big.

They don't want to, if they make it small, then it's worthless. So they make it a little big. And then he like trims it a little bit to fit and like curves the edges a little bit in the office. So that's what took so fucking long. And so that first try on, I think was a little uncomfortable. And after he left, he's all right, I got to go make adjustments for 15 minutes or so.

And that was really hard. Because after he left, she was, I don't know. It's hard to read a six-year-old, you know, but it's hard to read as in it's hard to know how much she's really conscious of it. How much is she processing this? And then she just kind of comes over to me and we're talking about it. And she's like, do I have to wear it? And she starts crying.

You know, it's like, God damn it.

Okay.

So, yeah, this is, it was hard. And we were doing our best and we're trying to convince her like, hey, yeah, I'm not going to do this. But if it ever gets really bad, I'm just going to have to show her pictures of people who have it so bad that they had to have surgery. It's like, we want to avoid surgery. Right. I had to tell her, like, if you have to get surgery, they have to put a giant, there's no 21st century cool way they do that, apparently. It's still, hey, we'll put a giant metal rod in your back that will, like, support your curved spine. And I don't want to, like, scare her unnecessarily, but I know, like, if she has a problem, I may have to resort to that.

For now, I was want to, like, scare her unnecessarily, but I know, like,

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