Tell BGT Girl not to be scared of Spinal Op... I was dancing again after 5 weeks and now Auditioning I’m for the Royal Ballet
HOW NHS GOT BALLET STAR BACK IN SHAPE
When teenage dancer Jennie Gallagher leant over, her mum Michelle suddenly noticed something was very wrong. Jennie, then 13, was wearing a thin top and Michelle spotted a huge hump over her girl’s right shoulder blade.
Doctors sent Jennie straight to hospital where she was diagnosed with scoliosis, which causes the spine to twist and curve to the side.
It’s the same condition suffered by Britain’s Got Talent contestant Julia Carlile who reached the final with her dance troupe MerseyGirls.
Julia, 15, feared spinal surgery on the NHS would fuse her vertebrae and mean she could never dance again.
She hoped to win BGT and the £250,000 prize to pay for a revolutionary procedure in America.
Julia’s plight touched the heart of the nation as well as BGT boss Simon Cowell. He pledged to pay for the treatment and vowed: “Whatever happens, we’re going to make sure you end up in a great place, don’t worry.”
But Jennie, also 15, has had the surgery on the NHS and wants to assure Julia there is no reason to be scared.
She says: “I watched Julia dance on BGT and I understand what she’s going through.
“I wasn’t that scared before the operation – I was more worried about not being able to dance afterwards. But scoliosis doesn’t mean that life is going to end. I have come through it and am still dancing.”
Jennie’s spine had a 60-degree bend when she was diagnosed and continued to curve to 82 degrees.
Michelle, 51, broke down when Jennie’s consultant warned she may never dance again but the young performer showed her true steel.
Jennie, who has been to dance classes since she was three, says: “I shouted at my mum for being negative. There are worse things that could have happened.
“It really hurt. It is the worst thing anyone could have said to me, but I knew that definitely wasn’t the end of me dancing and everything I’d worked for. I told my mum there’s no point crying about it now, you never know.”
Jennie astounded doctors after her spinal fusion operation in November by putting her ballet pointe shoes back on three days later.
And she was chosen to compete in the Dance World Cup, held in Germany last week. She is also due to audition for the Royal Ballet School early next year.
Jennie says: “Mum only noticed my back by chance. I was getting changed and she saw that I looked uneven.
“I was leaning to my right side and my ribs were sticking out.
“I’d broken my arm a couple of months before, so thought it was from that and I probably just needed some physio. Looking back now, my right arm always used to brush against my ribs and I felt them sticking out.”
Like BGT’s Julia, Jennie has been bullied about her condition.
At school people would say she was crippled and tell her she ought be called Eileen because she leans to the side.
She says: “It was really horrible. I’d get upset and it made me more self-conscious. It made me want to cover myself up, especially when I was dancing.”
And when her dance school teacher said she would never make it because of her back Jennie left for good.
Jennie says: “Since the operation, I’ve got a different attitude now. I still get comments but I don’t care what people say.”
Jennie had surgery at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital three days after her 15th birthday.
She says. “It hurt a lot and my spine was
starting to push my organs forwards. I was quite short of breath. I took my pointe shoes into hospital with me and put them on not long after the operation. The doctors weren’t very happy.
“I was in excruciating pain, but I was just determined to put them on. I started to walk a little bit the day after the op which is apparently quite rare, then I went home after a week. I just wanted to get back to dancing, and in the end I was back at dance classes five weeks later.
“I hated seeing all the sick kids, the crying parents at hospital. It got to the point where I could see there are so many more serious things happening.” The operation to straighten her
spine has left Jennie with a 20in scar but she is also three inches taller.
She says: “There is still a slight bend in my spine because they can’t make it perfect, and I can’t bend or twist my back as much, but I don’t need to do backflips in ballet. And although I get some pain sometimes, it feels a lot better now.
“I’m taller and my posture is better. My clothes fit better. I’m so glad I had it done.”
Jennie lives with former special needs teaching assistant Michelle and sister Aimee, 18, in Formby, Merseyside, and is now training at the Elliott-Clarke Performing Arts School in Liverpool.
She says: “My new dance school is so encouraging and they push me to go to a lot of auditions. My dream is to join a ballet company.” Single mum Michelle says: “Jennie has had to go through a lot, being bullied at school and suffering anxiety and having friendship issues – but she’s just come back stronger. I’m extremely proud of her.”
Michelle says even the bullying did not stop Jennie going into school: “She just gets on with it.
“When doctors said she wouldn’t dance again, she refused to believe it. When she put her pointe shoes in her hospital suitcase I said, ‘I don’t think so!’ but she wore them.
“They couldn’t believe her resilience, but I could. At her three-month check-up the consultant asked if she could touch her toes and she put her hands flat on the floor.
“She’s physically and mentally strong. She didn’t give up and now she’s dancing better than ever.”