Ice Skater, Dancer Marta Eliza Miller Has Been Overcoming Scoliosis

An Injury Led To Miller Being Diagnosed With Scoliosis

Miller recently told me about how her scoliosis journey started: “I started figure skating when I was 7 years old and when I was around 9 to 10 years old, my mom noticed that I slouched a lot while skating and looked down a lot.” Her mother, Corinna, then wondered whether she had scoliosis, “Marta ended up wearing a flexible brace for the first couple of years,” Corinna recalled to me. “Then she was doing a jump on the ice and injured herself, and we ended up at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and they also noticed she had scoliosis.” That was in 2017.

Scoliosis is when your spine curves to the left or right into more of a “C” or “S” shape rather than running straight down your back. In most cases, the exact cause is unknown. But it can result from bone abnormalities present at birth or conditions that affect nerve and muscle control such as cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. Scoliosis is most often right before puberty when growth spurts tend to occur. A greater than 10 degree curve sideways on X-rays qualifies as scoliosis, which according to some estimates affects around two percent of all people— although such estimates could be gross underestimates.

Signs of scoliosis include uneven shoulders, shoulder blade or hips, the head not being centered directly above the hips, leaning to one side, difficulty standing upright and back or leg pain or stiffness. You may even notice changes in the skin overlying the spine or a loss of height.

Mild curves may only need monitoring via periodic check-ups with the doctor. Moderate curves may necessitate wearing a back brace to keep the curve from getting worse, especially if you are still growing. More severe curves that may impeded breathing or are getting worse may end require up requiring surgery to straighten and stabilize the spine.

In 2020, Doctors At Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles Found That Miller’s Scoliosis Had Significantly Worsened

When Marta was first seen at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, a team of specialists from the Jackie and Gene Autry Orthopedic Center recommended the periodic check-up route. “They continued to keep her in the flexible brace and they had her do a motion study,” Corinna recalled. “What was interesting about Children’s Hospital is that immediately, we felt really at home. When we left Children’s Hospital that day, Marta just really wanted to give back.” Marta then chimed in with, “That’s when I started doing fundraising, and for my 12th or 13th birthday, instead of getting presents for my birthday, I decided to do a toy donation to Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles.” She also became a junior ambassador for Children’s Hospital.

Corinna continued the story: “Things were going great. She was a junior ambassador for a couple of years. We were raising money, and then all of a sudden, she had a spike in her curve. It went to 48 degrees.” This was 2020—which in hindsight was kind of a different year for practically everyone.

Marta described why: “I did three consecutive MRIs on my lower back, my spine and then my neck. And that was right before the COVID pandemic like a week before everything shut down.” Yeah, remember the COVID-19 pandemic, the things that many folks want you to kind of forget. “So when I did the MRI, it was like super late at night and like no one was in the hospital,” Marta explained. “It was a really surreal experience.”

Corinna added, “It was a little frightening too, because neither of us were sure if she could continue skating at that point and because the head doctor thought she might need to have surgery.” Not surprisingly this left a lot of thoughts spinning through both of their minds as Marta had been skating at that point 20 hours a week and had gone through homeschooling on her way to becoming a highly competitive figure skater.

The News Prompted The Millers To Create A Scoliosis Foundation

That led Corinna to put another spin on the situation: “So I’m thinking she might not be able to skate any longer. And from my background in the music business, we do a lot of fundraisers, so I thought maybe there’s a way we can give back.”

The way became “creating a foundation that would help other youth or children and families in the same situation as us, have a community with scoliosis, awareness, and realizing that having a diagnosis wasn’t necessarily an end all, because every single diagnosis is different,” in Corinna’s words. A foundation could help shed more light on what Corinna called “an invisible disability.”

Miller Made The Jump To Ice Dancing

The MRIs did reveal that one of Marta’s legs was in fact shorter than the other. However, as Marta explained, “The doctor said that if I didn’t have any pain, I could continue doing my sport because I was an athletic person.” In other words, the core reason why she didn’t need to get surgery then was that her core was so strong. “He just said ‘We’ll continue monitoring it,’ so that was really great news,” said Marta.

Marta did decide at the time to make one jump, though. This was a jump from figure skating to ice dancing to avoid having to jump so much. That’s because “she felt the jumps [in figure skating] were really impactful,” according to Corinna. While this was a little bit of a safety dance, so to speak, it still meant that she would participating in a very athletic sport that also requires a ton of strength.

Miller Finished High School At 16 And College At 19

Nevertheless, Marta has continued to make other types of jumps. She graduated from high school at just 16 years of age. And this helped her get a jump start for college. “I did college credits instead of high school credits for my junior and senior year, and then those credits transferred over when I was accepted to the American Musical Dramatic Academy Performing Arts College,” Marta explained. “That’s where I got my BFA in musical theater. And because I already had all my college credits completed, I shaved off two semesters in my BFA program.” That means that as a 19-year-old, Marta was already a college graduate. She’s already jumped to put her BFA to use, currently choreographing a production of Sweeney Todd at the Pocket Theater in Arkansas.

The Marta Eliza Miller Foundation Has Raised Over A Million Dollars

The Marta Eliza Miller Foundation has made a bunch of jumps too. Through letter writing campaigns and exhibitions with U.S. figure skating team members, the Foundation last year already reached its initial goal of raising a million dollars. Of which, “Over $475,000 has been provided to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles,” according to Corinna. That’s led to a cast room and exam room at the Autry Orthopedic Center being named after the Foundation.

Additionally, the Foundation has helped Children’s Hospital Los Angeles work on the Momentum Spine app. This app uses a smartphone camera along with AI—which, by the way, stands for artificial intelligence in case you’ve never heard this term—to generate a 3D model of your torso that can then help monitor the progression of spine curvature without the radiation of X-rays. This can help children spare the radiation that would be normally associated with the traditional scoliosis protocol of getting X-rays two to three times a year.

So, it’s fair to say that Marta has already been “Standing Tall, Being Strong, Dreaming Big” in different ways. Life has thrown her some curves, but she has skated right through them.