A spinal deformity doesn't stop one student from starting fresh at Kent State
Story by Sarah Jones
Photos by Lauren Sabol
Suzanne Sullivan treks across campus to her bright blue Saturn Viu parked in the C-lot.
"Being a commuter sucks," she exclaims.
But Sullivan is grateful to have such an inconvenience. Two years ago, she was unable to get anywhere.
After enduring four surgeries in five years to help her cope with an uncorrectable spine defect, Sullivan has enrolled in Kent State to get a degree that will allow her to help educate others suffering from similar disabilities.
Sarah Hallasky, a sophomore intergrated health studies major, was the first person Sullivan met at the university.
"She's like sparklers on the Fourth of July," Hallsky says. "Except she never goes out."
By the second day of classes, the two had plans to take yoga at the rec center, Hallsky says. That was when Sullivan explained the exercise had more to do with staying mobile than staying thin.
"I wasn't shocked or felt sorry for her," Hallsky says. "She doesn't feel that way about herself. When she told me, it wasn't like a sob story. It was an anatomy lesson."
The First Break
Sullivan was born with congenital defects, but she seemed to overcome them in her childhood, devoting herself to ballet.
Then, at 14, an accident in dance class lead to the discovery of fractures in her spine. Sullivan was diagnosed with Fixed Sagittal Imbalance, a painful spine disorder that left her unable to stand upright. The teenager's torso began to collapse over her hips, until she was forced to prop herself up with crutches.
She had her first spine surgery at 16, causing her to miss most of her junior and senior year of high school.
This was the first time she realized the importance of support, she says.
She was home-schooled by district teachers, who offered extra-credit to classmates who tagged along.
The system also allowed her to attend school when she felt up to it. Though she is grateful for the encouragement from her teachers and friends, there were some students who didn't understand.
"One kid asked me, 'Why do you walk like that?'" she says. "And my friend goes, 'Don't you know? Suzanne is a champion downhill skier.'"
As far as Sullivan knows, the kid still believes it.
"I had the greatest friends," she says.
Sullivan underwent four surgeries between ages 16 and 21 — two in one year — to reconstruct the natural curve of her spine.
Because the condition is rare, only one surgeon in the country performs the operation. And he had never done it on anyone as young as Sullivan.
The procedure seemed to work, then it fell apart in college.
The Second Break
Sullivan felt great when she enrolled as a nursing major in Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.
Despite her seemingly good health, Sullivan's mother talked her into switching her dorm room from the third floor of Boland Hall to a handicapped accessible room on the first floor.
The hall had experienced so many prank fire alarms that Sullivan's condition exempted her from leaving the building.
A few weeks into the second semester, a fire broke out on the third floor, killing three students. When she heard people screaming, she and her roommate left the building.
Several of her friends were severely burned.
It's amazing that they had the strength to recover," she marvels.
Except for the fire, Sullivan's first two years were pleasant. She was hired as a resident assistant and joined Delta Phi sorority at Seton Hall.
Then, in the fall of her junior year, she fell apart.
In order for her first surgery to work, Sullivan's bones had to fuse with a support rod.
They didn't.
Just like in high school, her spine began to collapse. She was barely able to attend classes, let alone perform hospital clinicals required of her nursing major.
She left on Nov. 21, 2002.
"I was hanging on," she says. "Everybody knoew I couldn't make it, but they knew I had to arrive at that myself."
She flew out to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis for another procedure called Pedical Subtraction Osteotomy.
Many people were shocked when she walked again.
It wasn't the deformity that pushed her, Sullivan says, but the limitations she encountered. She says she never saw herself as limited.
« Prev | 1 | 2 | Next »