91-Year-Old Woman Amazingly Dances With Her Doctor After Spine Surgery

Want to see what it looks like when you are as old as you feel? Meet Julia Tourtellotte. This little missus is 91 years young and has not stood still for a day. In fact, she took up clogging when she was in her 40s and has been dancing to this day. She even teaches the dance at her senior center, until last year, when it became hard because of a pain in her leg.Show more

After meeting with a neurosurgeon by the name of Dr. Sabino D’Agostino, she discovered that a radical treatment is needed if she wants to keep her usual lifestyle. So, for the first time even in South Carolina, a robotic spinal surgery was performed on our brave young lady. This handy “little” machine allows for the procedure to be more tolerable for people Julia’s age. The procedure is minimally invasive, causes less bleeding and has a quicker recovery time.

Surely enough, just a couple of short months after her surgery, Julia came back to the Trident Medical Center to reunite with the man who helped her keep dancing. Music filled the halls of the hospital as Dr. D’Agostino jumped in, in his scrubs and tennis shoes, to join his lovely patient in her clogging. He says he doesn’t believe he did his very best; in fact, Dr. D’Agostino says the only time he danced so much was at his wedding!

Julie is the oldest patient to receive such a treatment to date. She says that she attributes the ease with which she recovered after the procedure to her frequent walk on the treadmill and keeping her diet free of sugar and red meat. She also doesn’t take any medicine, apart from her glaucoma drops.

And just like that, merely 24 hours after her surgery, Julia was able to leave the hospital pain free. Dr. D’Agostino removed one of the discs in her back that were pinching a nerve and replaced it with a plastic space. After spending five grueling months off the dance floor, Julia returned to dancing the day Dr. D’Agostino released her from the hospital.

Now, our dainty little dancer shows no signs of stopping. She even has her next dancing trip planned out of state. She just has to hit the triple digits first. This great-great grandmother plans to keep on with her toe-tapping without tapping out, for more years to come. And who can blame her? We wish we are that agile at her age!