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[Arrogance]

Ouch, I think I know the pain you felt after the nail broke. When I was 9 years old, I had a bone tumor in my left thigh. I remember how much I cried from the pain and it took a year for the doctors to finally discover it and remove it. It was very close to the femoral artery. Risky surgery. Any news from NHS? Have they found a spare bed for you to get the nail removed?

[Gman23]

I have no words, honestly Dr Guichet should have refunded your money and even given you additional support. I hope it all goes well for you, will keep you in my prayers.

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Hi everyone,

Just giving you a small update on my 5th surgery which took place last Saturday at Kings College Hospital. Because my slated operation needed 2 surgeons, one for my femur and the other to harvest bone from my hips, the only way possible was to make them come in on a weekend and that they did with no hesitation (respekt!).

I've been so anxious about this surgery that for once in my life, I had nothing to add or say.  How could things go so wrong that my right guichet nail had to break too?  Not to mention the continuous hopeless non-union of my right leg.

At least things happened quickly, I didn't get to enjoy any benzodiazapine cktail before the big countdown to sleep.  I just woke up and was told, it's over, your doc will tell you more tomorrow.

Wheeled back to my room, I was attended by many because they couldn't get my blood pressure above 65 but I tried to tell them that's kinda my range.  I remember in Milan during my 3rd surgery, when my blood pressure plummetted, they called a priest.

I was observed every 15 minutes 24/7 for fever, infections, blood tests, IV antibiotics, IV painkillers, IV saline, my long scars/wound sites checked twice a day - in addition to sheet changes everytime I pee/bleed, shower and shampoo, movies 'n meals in bed... I'm starting to think twice about leaving this Club Med.

My doctor finally appeared on Monday morning and while she always has her serious face on, she was almost skipping like a child telling me that she was able to remove the broken guichet nail through the original insertion hole. They were fearful that the nail had disintergrated into so many pieces, they had to slice me open like a frog, and fish around for 'shrapnel'.
 
Instead, my doc was able to yank everything out intact and lost only 1 bob inside me where she had to do some digging. She replaced the guichet nail with a 12mm trauma nail using the same pin sites and chiselled out a chunk of my iliac crest (hip) to fill my non-union gap like a kebab. She mentioned that there was significant metal contamination and had to scrub my insides out (whatever that means, rust?). She felt sorry for my freak-show number of scars and asked if I would let her remove my keloids while she had me on the operating table. I told her I also needed a face lift, boob job and tummy tuck if ever she got bored.

So that's that.  No shortening needed as the 2018 bone graft held up so much so that when they removed the Guichet nail, my entire right leg didn't collapse. Once the new trauma nail was stabilized in place, all they had to do was supplement my empty right gaps with fresh hip bones.

The one thought that kept coming back to me is this.  The NHS has me hospitalized for 3.5 weeks because they deemed this surgery high risk and invasive. Hence, I'm being fussed about day and night with pressure/temperature checks every 15 minutes, antibiotic drips, painkillers, physio, wound checks, scans/xrays/tests and even blood transfusions, to prevent sepsis, gangrene, embolism, blood clots, necrotising bacteria not to mention COVID.

Now, when I compare this NHS aftercare to my Guichet Milan experience in 2017 - where I had my left leg nail removed, accidentally broken by Guichet, replaced with a new nail, osteotomy to rebreak my left leg, marrow harvested from 2 hip bones and grafted onto my right non-union gap. Both surgeries are essentially quite similar with 1 giant difference: Guichet discharged me from the hospital after 1 night while NHS looks after me for 3.5 weeks.

I had suffered after that surgery just as much as I have after this recent one, none more than any other surgery patient.  I couldn't move at all, couldn't pee, couldn't eat, couldn't sit up, was in agonizing pain etc. However, how can a doctor or any decent human being, risk the life of his patient by limiting their hospital stay to save costs?

I don't think NHS is exaggerating when they constantly check for fevers, biopsies, give heparin shots, monitor wound site, change sheets, dvt socks, endless imaging, blood tests and scans... when in comparison, I was given a pharmacy prescription to fill by myself, when checking out of the Milan hospital after 1 night.

I remember being so angry with myself then because I was all alone at the Radisson Blu Milan and was in so much pain, I couldn't move from the bed, had to pee into trash cans and was marinating in the same bedsheet of urine and blood for days. It wasn't down to Radisson Blu's staff to care for me, it should have been the job of a hospital. And the irony is I was a paying patient of Guichet's in Milan 2017 and am now, a free patient at the NHS in 2020.

These 2 stark experiences upset me still, because the sheer day and night difference in aftercare btw Guichet and NHS simply shows how unnecessarily I had suffered and risked, in the hands of a doctor who prioritizes profit margins over life.

[E Z]

This doctor should be shamed and ran out of this practice before he butchers someone else. I am so sorry you had to go thru this.

[ru]

dr Debiparsad discharges patients 2 days after surgery to make it cheaper. dr Paley keeps them for 5 days .

[snowpiecer]

So sorry for everything that happened to you. Guichet is a monster. I was once thinking of doing the surgery with him. As soon as I realized what he did to you, I cancelled my consultation with him. The crazy thing is that he was acting like a beggar. He literally emailed me long paragraphs about why I should rethink and do the surgery with him. He was literally begging me. This guy should never be called a surgeon or doctor.

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

RIGHT LEG POST OP (5th Surgery)

 

HIP BONE HARVESTING

 

 

BLOOD TRANSFUSION

 

UPDATES ON INSTAGRAM
I'll post daily photo updates on Instagram, but my account has been reported and muted. So this combo is the best I can do, sorry for the inconvenience.

https://www.instagram.com/unicorn_gets_taller/?hl=en

[Arrogance]

Haha finally some good news combined  with classic Unicorn humour. I'm glad you still got it!  Funny that they talked about metal contamination in your leg and you wondered if it's rust. I said in a previous comment that I wouldn't be surprised if the nail rusted. Keep going strong! You could go on one of those TedxTalk shows one day. You are very inspiring and have a great story.

PS: I noticed your teddy bear . Check out this cute thing I got myself for Christmas last year . I named it Unicorn
http://prntscr.com/swv4og

[seriouslyinjured]

I really feel for you for what you been through. as i have been butchered and had to have several correction surgeries after. you have had such a rough road and probably the longest road to recovery out of all of us, i really hope you will have a full recovery now, with quick progression, i hope you can sue the doctor. we must always keep active on the forum so people are constantly reminded about the names of the doctors that butcher us, so everyone will always know these are the scum that just care about profit margin and not their patients

[BetzLandLiberator]

dr Debiparsad discharges patients 2 days after surgery to make it cheaper. dr Paley keeps them for 5 days .

Dr. Betz keeps the patients for 10 to 14 days in the hospital after surgery. I've stayed two weeks there.
Much safer this way.

[BetzLandLiberator]

Hi everyone,

Just giving you a small update on my 5th surgery which took place last Saturday at Kings College Hospital. Because my slated operation needed 2 surgeons, one for my femur and the other to harvest bone from my hips, the only way possible was to make them come in on a weekend and that they did with no hesitation (respekt!).

These 2 stark experiences upset me still, because the sheer day and night difference in aftercare btw Guichet and NHS simply shows how unnecessarily I had suffered and risked, in the hands of a doctor who prioritizes profit margins over life.

I'm glad you're doing ok and finally getting away from the nightmare Guichet put you in. Good luck with your recovery. 

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

MACBOOKS ARE PEE-PROOF, NOW YOU KNOW


One great salve about our brains is, we do automatically get mini amnesia once a physically traumatic event is over. So for the sake of all the rosy diaries in this forum, let me regale you with some fresh stories before they too turn rose tinted.

Please never let me forget that I’ve been living with constant pain for 4 years now. Even up to Jan/Feb’20 when my nail broke, I had to live in pain until I could finally get surgery in Jun’20. Living in constant pain means having to think a long time before mustering the courage and energy to move, to get out of bed, to wait until my bladder bursts, to minimise every overdue action until I can track my daily activity looking at the sweat stains I leave behind like a snail on a hot trail.

And every time I think I’ve left the pain behind me, it slithers up from nowhere and bites. No more so than this 5th surgery just because they had to renail me again, and this is already a lot better than my 1st surgery when I was overreamed and drilled with more holes than necessary.

But because now, they had cut my hip too, I have zero movement ability before my back pulls and I literally tore a stitch from trying to pee. Most of the opioids no longer provide relief because I’ve been on painkillers so long that morphine has no more soothing effect on me. They kept pumping me with 40mg of morphine with each dose to the extent, I ended up howling and crying last night because I suffered drug withdrawals like a true junkie. To complete the look, my arms are now covered in needle punctures because my veins have 'gone bad'. In the 3 days of hospitalisation alone, I had to change my canula 4 times, and it's unbearably painful when it takes them forever to dig around your veins with a large needle and a thirsty straw.

This is what happens when you're debilitated for 4 years.

Added to the fact that I have been given 3 suppositories and probably about 8 laxatives with little result means my stomach is always roiling, I'm panic scrambling to any enclosed space (nevermind bathroom), half soiling myself and peeing on the floor… there’s so little human decency left. My only comfort is my ward comprises 12 more female orthopaedic patients in their 80s and we're all ladies of equal high maintenance and delicate manners.

I really wished last night when I coughed a lot suddenly that perhaps I could catch Covid and die in hospital. It would be a dignified exit strategy. But unfortunately, that didn’t pan out the elegant way as all it did was yank at my hip stitches with every cough the way one hurts when sneezing with a broken rib.

So please don’t let me forget how much pain I endure on a daily basis with the smallest of indignities like reaching around the sticky floor under my bed hoping to find my half filled bedpan, or when morphine itched my ass so much, I absentmindedly jammed my phone charger down my butt crack and the wonderment I felt when my Macbook survives being peed on. One more reason for APPL stock to rally.

And I dare get angry when someone treats me like an invalid; I have actually been one probably 3.5 years ago.

[kats20]

This sounds horrible. I'm so sorry you're going through it. But it's the first step to recovering, right? You're better off now having had the surgery than before, even though you're going through all of this temporary difficulty and pain.

I know it won't feel like it now but you've taken the first step to putting all of this behind you............

[Arrogance]

No Unicorn. Dying now wouldn't be dignified. It would be sad. Especially after all you've been through. It would be like throwing the towel after 12 boxing rounds.

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Dr. Betz keeps the patients for 10 to 14 days in the hospital after surgery. I've stayed two weeks there.
Much safer this way.

Safe is actually the right word to use just because this surgery is very invasive and there WILL BE complications.  When your doctor stiffs you off hospital days, it's akin to this analogy:

You agreed an upfront price to renovate your house. In your mind, you had chosen an expensive/exclusive contractor because you deserve the best after saving your hard-earned money for years to afford this life change. You imagine walking into your dream house with the finest detailing like you had discussed with your overly charming contractor who seemed competent with his sleek brochures.

However, the moment you pay him the price upfront (his condition), you realize tables couldn't turn fast enough. Suddenly, he's trying to scrimp and save on everything even at the expense of your health and life because ANY expenditure he spends (even if you had prepaid for it) will be eating into his profit margin.

This is when you realize your dream has turned into a nightmare. Your charming contractor is not so charming anymore in the bright light of day. You realize there are conflicts of interests when he installs inferior products that he had manufactured himself so that again, profit margins are maximized. You’re now at the behest of someone who’s serving you a beggar’s meal after you had paid a king’s ransom.

Suddenly, he's hard to reach because he's prospecting new clients and every time you hit a complication, he tells you he needs more money to fix one thing which is a bottleneck to completing your entire project. So, you keep handing over cash as you don't really have any other choice; you're already in bed and 8 months pregnant, there is no turning back.

In addition, you're not a housing expert or contractor, you can't tell the truth from BS. He keeps blaming you and other sub-contractors for things that go wrong and you want to believe him because sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.

You blame yourself as you're being further victimized and extorted. You feel like you have no option but to keep punishing yourself for that one bad decision you made years ago.

This is how it feels like psychologically. It is not just physiological damage but PTSD for years to come. The long-term damage is you stop trusting anyone, you set up tall fences around you, you don't let anyone in and you strike at anyone like a cornered injured kitten.

Sound familiar?

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Am chatty tonight as am in mental overdrive due to the drugs and body going into shock.

Over the course of the last 4 years, my body has built resistance to diazepam, morphine, codeine, tramadol, ambien but lo and behold, I'm a virgin to OxyContin, alleluia!

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

What a full circle I've come, as I was the beneficiary of a Sackler scholarship at Harvard doing a Phd programme in chemistry, on art conservation. The family that the world has come to hate has actually saved me not once but twice!

So for people who don't fully get how we stupid lengtheners get into trouble, besides getting into trouble for lengthening in the first place, it goes something like this:

You need to pee and you've had the millionth debate with yourself if your bladder is full enough to make the trip to the bathroom worthwhile. The nurses are not amused at all to find your room looking like Venice every morning because you manage to miss your potty entirely every time. Yup, girls have poor aim too, but our tools are less pointy.

So you make the effort to sit up without triggering your angry hip bone, who's pissed off that you've just lobbed off a nice chunk of sexy round iliac crest. And as if it weren't fun enough, your doc tells you to bear weight only on the left leg. So you're now doing this hopping dance to simultaneously stand up without being electrocuted by your hip while trying not to keel over and break your nose.

And you're missing 1 shoe, but screw that you're not going on a date. As you congratulate yourself for your James Bond manouvre, you get yanked backwards because your arm is still attached to the IV line and duh, now it HURTS! And you can't even bend your body to detach the IV as your hips are on fire (not in the Shakira way). Ok, now I look like Jesus about to hand out fish and bread, arms wide open and perched on top of Rio da Janeiro.

Of course, the panic button is exactly where it should be, out of reach. So now, all I can do is scream help but I'm trapped in my own private room with the air conditioning on (awww poor me) and I can't bend left or right or backtrack because of my hips and I'm still balancing on 1 leg.

This is when all hell breaks loose (in my head). To anybody else, I'm just standing there looking like Jesus and not doing very much really. And for something so simple, that's how you find yourself trembling from exertion, crying for being so stupid and vulnerable and in agony from every screaming body part. The nurses finally get to you before you collapse but by now, you're going into shock. You black out, your temperature drops fast, you become numb and your entire body is racking in, well, shock.

And this is how I live dangerously.

[Arrogance]

Wow what a bloody circus

[kats20]

Has your surgeon given you an idea of your recovery and rehabilitation timeline?

[seriouslyinjured]

Guichet is an absolute butcher, he should lose his medical licence and should be jailed for what hes done to you. i hope other people learn from this and not use him in the future. i hope to hear you writing one day you recover physically and mentally 100 percent and it felt like it was a bad dream. keep fighting and hang in there. i know how it feels not to know if you will ever heal and be in limbo, when i had non union and my screws were breaking. i have almost healed myself now thanks to the help of further surgeries, once my nails are taken out and my damaged glutes are repaired that will be the last of my complications over, keep  fighting you will get there and then you can move forward with your life, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, you are in survival mode now but as soon as you feel progression bit by bit you will get stronger. please keep us all up to date with whats going on

[YellowSpike]

I don't post or come on here much anymore, much less get emotional at things. But your latest updates almost had me in tears. However...I am SO happy to hear that there may FINALLY be a silver lining for you. You seem to not need shortening surgery, and that's great!!! Maybe these doctors finally got it right for you. And I do have a great a feeling about the trauma nail replacing your G-Nail. I can tell you from experience, I almost needed a bone graft, but when I had a screw replaced, it somehow triggering my body into finally healing itself (or continue the healing, as it seemed to have stopped at 50% on my left leg). So I think replacing the nail will have been a great move for you.

I am so sorry to hear about your cat. From one animal/cat lover to another, I know how hard that is. I'm keeping you in my thoughts and prayers. I actually feel happier knowing that you seem to finally be entering the final phase of this nightmare. If I were you, I'd write a book about this. Or go on TV and tell your story. You probably have THE story to tell as far as LL is concerned.

[OldieButGoldie]

stay strong Unicorn! You are the best writer ever!!
hug
OBG

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Hello night owls,

Woke up in agony again because now that we've timed it, the OxyContin lasts exactly 7 hours and takes about 15 minutes to be effective. These become very important stats if you want to turn painkiller pro.

I've been off grid for the past 2 weeks and just learnt that one of my influential bosses died last week, Stanley Ho. He used to have the sole monopoly of gambling, casinos and sports betting in Macau/Hong Kong. He was an inspirational man who's primary creed was keeping everything simple (with the small exception of his 4 wives and 17 kids...).

I was the COO of his online gaming company in 2000 when I was 24 and didn't know the first thing about casinos. This little annecdote popped up in my Oxy fog head when I remember him, so share I will.

I'm a big believer in Occam's Razor which predicates that the simplest solution is often the one staring you in the face. So here goes...

Our online gaming site was phished by hackers in 2000, yes, when dinosaurs roamed the land and Nigerian princes weren't even conceived yet to share their wealth with you.

Basically, the hackers duplicated our casino website with every possible permutation/spelling of our company name. That way, in the offchance a gambler makes a typo and logs onto a copycat website, his login/passwords/accounts/personal details get stolen.

The hackers courteously sent me an email at 7am in the morning asking for a daily extortion of USD$10k in order to keep our security breach silent, how considerate. It wasn't a king's ransom and I could forsee the 'expenditure' being swept under 'GOODWILL' by our creative accountants. However, little hacker might tell his friends and before you know it, we'll have more extorters than we do gamblers. So ok, need to nip this in the bud, but how? The world wide web was so so wide and anonymous... then.

One thing's for sure, he's Italian from his email handler, tiscali.it  So that narrows something down and my ever helpful PA was Italian, red headed, hot tempered, heavily pregnant and her maternal instincts kicked in prematurely. She picked up the phone, called Tiscali the telecomms company in Italy and shouted her way into getting the exact name, address, telephone and shoe size of the poor hacker. The schmuck stood no chance when he hatched this evil plan that morning.

So now, we have the hacker's name, address and telephone. Thanking my PA for her resourcefulness, my COO self took over with my executive management training... I called the FBI and reported this criminal hacking incident like a good citizen would. This is when Occam, were he alive, would make an executive decision to switch our PA and COO roles respectively. Not only did the FBI not care about webs of fishes in Italy, all they wanted to know was whether there was a bomb somewhere. TOTAL FAIL on my part.

Ok, it's now afternoon where I was and close to midnight in Italy. How do we get rid of an anonymous evil villain who pre-dates trolls and the dark web? I mean, Google was struggling in a garage and my most advanced tool was Yahoo Maps (yes, this was the equivalent of cave paintings).

Nevertheless, ignorance can be bliss and dumbluck effective. Yahoo Maps produced a local map of the 2-goat town in which the hacker and his mother resided... and I felt like a CIA operator with advance satellite imagery. The map also listed all the restaurants in town and one caught my eye, Palazzo di Giada, stuck out like a sore thumb between the A-Zs of Aladdin Kebab and Pizza Napolitana. So I called the chinese restaurant, bonded with the chinese owner who sympathized with our hacking dilemma and offered to send his toughest cook to beat up the hacker. NOT REALLY.

We placed an order for dinner delivery to the hacker with a sweet note, 'Complimenti da Stanley Ho'. Not sure if the food was that bad but the hacker disappeared and was never heard of again. Occam would have been proud.

Not sure why I'm telling you this story but this is the one anecdote that sticks out most in my PTSD brain when I think of my mentor boss' passing. The simplest solution is usually right in front of you.

[Arrogance]

WOW! Italy, hackers, FBI and a cool young girl chasing some bastards and leaving a message in italian at the end mafia style. I felt like I was reading Codename Villanelle. Awesome story!

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

I'm rambling again but awaiting discharge decision (yay?)...

In the meantime, my drug fuelled delirium is responsible for my insomnia and reverse deja-vu. In non-crazy speak, it just means I'm experiencing flashes of memory so vivid in the little sleep I get that they're not actually dreams but big chunks of my pre-LL life that I have forgotten, due to the last 4 years of trauma.

So, I was sent to work in Moscow in 1997 and at that time, capitalism was a new new thing. There are 2 books I love about that era called The Oligarchs and much later, The Red Notice. Before I drone on and on about meso-capitalist Russian life, you've to remember that I was a naive 22-year old bushy tailed summer intern for a Russian oligarch.

Of course, I don't speak Russian and I used Excel purely to enter numbers neatly after doing the math on my handheld calculator. Remember the Texas Instrument calculator? The one that can calculate IRR and NPV in under 3 hours on a good day? Anyway, those were my high finance days.

So the first thing about Russian life, you'll find tons of people at the metro station selling blackened (used) lightbulbs. Why would ANYONE even piss-poor in post-communist Russia buy a burnt-out lightbulb? They're sold for the equivalent of about USD$0.02 but what use was there?

I found out why eventually. Everyday when I get to the office and flip on the lights, nothing happens. It's not because there's no electricity... it's because the savvy locals have switched out all the good working lightbulbs for the burnt-out ones that they had bought for $0.02

Its SHEER GENIUS that Thomas Edison himself hasn't even thought of. No wonder western companies initially failed to survive in Russia, they got outsmarted by every layman and their babushka.

[Arrogance]

Yup. You should definitely  write a book

[Ascending]

I am really very happy indeed to hear that you are on the mend.  It's good to see your humour in your writing again.  I wish you a speedy recovery.

[Purushrottam]

Thats wonderful, well deserved good news, Unicorn!

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

 

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Insomnia again...

When I was working in Paris, our summer internships were a thinly disguised beauty pageant because the interviews were conducted by our lecherous male bankers. So I've seen my fair share of beauty & brains and then, not so much.  This one takes the cake!

Hot intern emails our F/X trader requesting a currency exchange quote...

Trader:  Best I can do is 1:1.27, in USD

Intern:  What is USD?

Trader:  U Should Die

[Batu]

Intern:  What is USD

Oh dear lmao.... great response.

Good to see a smile on your face Unicorn, you look amazing for 44/45! After hearing your vivid horror stories I would have expected something resembling the female version of Lo Pan.

It's inspring to see you looking so happy.

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

WELL YOU ASKED FOR IT

The emotional toll leg lengthening will have on you and your loved ones is drastically underestimated and unspoken.

One of the things you have to consider before doing LL is the kind of ignorance and discrimination that will hit you from all directions and from where you least expect. NOBODY can even begin to understand your predicament until they have walked in your shoes and lived the perils of your lengthening process. Anything shy of that actual experience does not entitle anyone to judge you.

It's always hunky dory when everything pans out exactly as planned especially if you’ve managed to do it on the down low. For me, that's the best-case scenario.

However, if things don’t go according to plan, then hell hath no fury. In these 4 years, I think I have cut out 95% of my friends just because I can no longer cope with their silent judgements and occasional outbursts of hurtful remarks. They might not even be that insensitive, it might just be me being hypersensitive.

I was chatting with 2 friends yesterday. Funnily enough, these are close enough friends with whom I had shared my journey and agony. They had visited me physically when I was completely broken, so you'd think that they would be slightly more empathetic.

At some stage in our chat, I was explaining how much pain I was suffering since they had asked me how I was feeling. And my friend interrupted me, "but you asked for this, so why are you complaining so much?"

It dawned on me then, that I've actually heard this comment so many times now in the last 4 years; that I had made the decision to undertake this risky cosmetic procedure, hence, I deserve to suffer if things go awry. It’s not like I’m an innocent victim of cancer…

The line between deserving and innocent is so blurred. One can argue that a person who smokes and contracts lung cancer is ‘deserving’ to suffer? The way, we deserve to suffer if our cosmetic procedure goes wrong? It can’t be that simplistic.

And this ‘ex-friend’ adds that if I were so miserable, I should just go kill myself. That’s when I had a mental shutdown. My system couldn’t handle further verbal assaults. It's hard enough to not think about all the things that I've lost, the life I could have had, to be constantly in pain and unsure of what the future holds for me. It's too much for one brain to handle especially if you don't have a strong emotional support system around you.

Some friends even compare their height against mine and claim that they’re shorter than my starting height and yet, have zero urge to lengthen their legs. How's that even a valid argument? We resort to the desperate measure of breaking our legs because we suffered from feeling short our entire lives irregardless of our starting height, be it 150cm or 180cm. We did this to purge our inner demons. Others might be more conscious about their weight while we’re obsessed about being ‘vertically challenged’. How does one even begin to compare if one neurosis is more noble than the next?

My friend just wanted me to admit that I had made a mistake to undergo leg lengthening but haven’t I been punished enough, as it is? I will maintain that it is not a mistake to find courage to realize your dream. It is also not a mistake to do your homework and research to the best of your ability to make an informed decision. However, it was my mistake for ignoring all the red flags and choosing Guichet. That I can admit. The rest is happenstance.

So, all I’m just saying is, you’ll be opening pandora’s box when you choose to break your legs. Don’t expect most people to understand it, condone it and be sympathetic. If anything, many will be secretly rooting for you to fail so that they have a true cautionary tale to spin. It’s always easier to be smug; and yet, never truly have the balls to do what we crazy lengtheners did. So if you ever need a safe emotional refuge, seek it amongst those who've walked in your shoes and don't expect anything more from those who haven't. It's not a reflection of you, it's general apathy. And if nothing else, it reveals the true colours of everyone around you.

For you LLers, we had a dream, we took a chance and we went for it. It’s a lot more than I can say for the rest who're quick to judge, and too cowardly to do anything else. For that, I can truly say F*** U and F*** Off!

Go back to your glass houses.