Mckenna Grace Details How Living with Scoliosis Since Age 12 Affected Her Career
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Mckenna Grace is no longer hiding her struggles with scoliosis.
The 16-year-old actress shared with The Hollywood Reporter that she has been living with the spinal condition for four years and only learned about it from her dad, who is a surgeon.
"I'm a very affectionate person, so I hug my parents a lot, and whenever I would hug him, he would feel my back and my spine, and he would tell me my back felt weird," she told the publication.
She first hinted at going through a medical procedure to fix the condition with a video and statement on her Twitter page on Nov. 9.
"Occasionally, life imitates art and the night of my episode of Handmaid's Tale where I was in a hospital bed came out, I was actually in real hospital bed," she wrote, promising to later elaborate on what was going on and thanking her doctors.
I actually stepped away from Twitter a while ago after reading some awful posts/comments…but my surgeon @dr_skaggs is only on here, so I wanted to publicly thank him and his team at @CedarsSinai for changing my life❤️Best spine surgeon in the world!!!! pic.twitter.com/CFPNBbqPwS
— Mckenna Grace (@MckennaGraceful) November 9, 2022
Following the surgery, she said that she chose to speak out about the condition after dealing with it on set only grew harder.
"On Ghostbusters, there wasn't a lot of hiding a big old clunky, massive back brace. But for the most part, I just kept it to myself. Even though it's not the type of thing that is a liability, I didn't want productions to overthink and think that I was a liability," she shared with The Hollywood Reporter.
Grace added that, due to her health, she needed to have her costumes tailored throughout her various projects, and she also took time off in the middle of filming The Handmaid's Tale.
"It was very difficult to schedule a surgery in the midst of everything I was doing. I had been shooting since around May, and then I went straight from that project onto another one that worked six-day weeks — like, adult hours — and that was for a month," she explained.
This account is now a scoliosis awareness and a @dr_skaggs fan account🙂This is a video of me standing up & walking for the first time. My amazing nurses made a goal to eventually make it to the bridge outside of the ICU-where we saw A Friend of the Family billboard @CedarsSinai pic.twitter.com/HYlRsbVFLo
— Mckenna Grace (@MckennaGraceful) November 18, 2022
She expressed that she has been returning to her usual activities and is focusing on her physical health. Following the surgery, she went from having a 47-degree curve on her back to a 6-degree curve.
According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, a curve is considered significant if it is greater than 25 to 30 degrees. Curves exceeding 45 to 50 degrees are considered severe and often require more aggressive treatment.
