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[onemorefoot]

Maybe Guitchet is a good surgeon, but genius? Not even near, less than 2/100 of the population are that, he has an average intelligence. I like that he doesnt fall in love with his patients, but a little more empathic would help.

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Maybe Guitchet is a good surgeon, but genius? Not even near, less than 2/100 of the population are that, he has an average intelligence. I like that he doesnt fall in love with his patients, but a little more empathic would help.

I'm making an effort to be fair and kind as I really do not intend to bash any doctors here.

I agree that I'll take skills over charm any day.

And definitely integrity over geniuses...

[realpatient]

The problem is CLL doctors are more interested in money than anything else so they become salesmen with no integrity and in worst cases no geniuses at all. CLL itself is corrupted.

[helloworld]

I agree Unicorn's diary shouldn't be polluted with the boxing match. We can open a new thread. From my experience the only thing I can advice is beware of charm for charm is sometimes false. Dr Guichet was harsh from the beginning. Other doctors can be charming at first and then turn to Mr Hyde and attack their own patients like Helloworld and Musicmaker who had their asses sold to German.

Sorry, but I have to reply to this one:
Fitbone company Wittenstein gave me a replacement nail within 24 hours, and Dr. Monegal operated me free of charge and hospital was also free of charge.
The doctor then arranged for me to talk directly to the CEO of the Fitbone and I met him in Barcelona.

[realpatient]

Sorry, but I have to reply to this one:
Fitbone company Wittenstein gave me a replacement nail within 24 hours, and Dr. Monegal operated me free of charge and hospital was also free of charge.
The doctor then arranged for me to talk directly to the CEO of the Fitbone and I met him in Barcelona.

Not here. This should be discussed in a new thread, but did they compensate you? What about Musicmaker? Did they compensate her? Did they talk to her too? Was she offered a replacement within 24 hours too? Please discuss in a new thread.

[LLSouthAmerica]

I think it's plainly obvious what's happening here (realpatient, Auron and helloworld). Please refrain from discussing the subject in this diary. Not Unicorn nor MusicMaker want to speak bad about their doctors, don't get them into trouble with them when this is not the main issue here.

[onemorefoot]

I'm making an effort to be fair and kind as I really do not intend to bash any doctors here.

I agree that I'll take skills over charm any day.

And definitely integrity over geniuses...

Yes, I dont like charmful doctors, almost everybody are hypocritical, that is the reason why I prefer that they tell me the truth without biscuits inside, I like that of Guitchet.

[doomsday]

You never spoke with any. You're a 17 year old kid so stop talking like you actually know something lol.

[Body Builder]

Yes, I dont like charmful doctors, almost everybody are hypocritical, that is the reason why I prefer that they tell me the truth without biscuits inside, I like that of Guitchet.

Guichet does not speak the truth. He is just a careless and money hungry doctor who stops to care for patients after they operate and take the money from them.

[onemorefoot]

You never spoke with any. You're a 17 year old kid so stop talking like you actually know something lol.

You are almost 30 or 30. I dont know And know even less, age is that important? I dont want to start a drama here, se have to keep in mind that this is Unicorns diary.

[onemorefoot]

Guichet does not speak the truth. He is just a careless and money hungry doctor who stops to care for patients after they operate and take the money from them.

That is the part that I dont like, just say that serious people are not as irritating as charmful people.

[realpatient]

and charmful doctors are more harmful when they are hypocritical and betray patients who paid a lot

[redesky00]

hi unicorn
I think you should focus on recovery now, even if it may reduce your extension height,
You can be better in the future

Best wishes

[Penguinn]

Any updates, Unicorn?

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Any updates, Unicorn?

Hi Penguinn,

Yeah, lots of updates!   Since I last saw the new doc at Kings College Hospital, she had in the space of 2-3 weeks ordered up about 12 tests immediately.  I've now done full bloods, xrays, CT scans, physio, therapist, ultrasound, vernacular scans etc.  I'm so impressed seeing that everything has been free, speedy, polite and super efficient.

Having spoken to a few patients at the department, it turns out that it's well known for being super professional and effective.

That said, I've not had any glimpses of the results yet.  All I know is I no longer have any blood clots, there are no cysts growing in my lengthened gap.  I'll be seeing the doc in person tomorrow and I'll post what she says.

A few things I have learnt : no matter which doctor you go to, please always ask for second opinions.

I learnt that there is NO WAY a marrow graft can fuse a 7-10cm gap.  Also the fact that I underwent a marrow graft procedure on a leg that has runaway from 7 to 10cm with nobody noticing  - is downright scary.  There were ample xrays prior and post surgery so you'd think anyone responsible would check for length, if not out of professional obligation, perhaps out of courtesy seeing that this entire surgery costs an arm and a leg (no pun intended). 

You'd think that anyone who performs surgery claiming extensive experience, would check before and after that there's no runaway lengthening since I had reported accidental clicking since last year and there are no calluses/non-union formed at all.  I was even put on a 3 clicks/day schedule from April on.  It was actually the A&E folks at NHS who measured my xrays and said I was close to 10cm.

It befuddles me whether I was intentionally put through a useless surgery for financial gain or did a world-class surgeon actually believe that a marrow graft can fuse 7cm when the entire world knows that it cannot?  That was one unnecessary pain and cost 

I've also met up with more LL patients in these last few weeks and it is so true that the garish stories do not go published for fear of doctors or shame.  An example : One LL patient recently committed suicide and another suffered life altering gangrene infections which required flesh being grisly carved out on a daily basis.

We all noticed that when LL patients undergo racheting, the pain is so intense that everyone is crying all the time taking hours to click but once the entire ordeal is over, people tend to understate how painful or how much they suffered.  I guess it's human nature,  I don't know.  Nobody wants to admit to being a coward and a crybaby perhaps.  And our brains quickly surpress those traumatic memories anyway, as self preservation.

Clear example is the guy I had first met at Isokinetic when I went through my first cyber test who told me that the pain was so negligible, the cyber test was more painful.  It turns out that he bare face lied to all of us (us being the gullible pack of bankers, lawyer and a doctor).  When we confronted him later, he said he didn't want to scare us (!).  In addition, we found out later that he was addicted to opioids as well. 

So you cannot trust one source of info, and I definitely did.  I heard only what I wanted to hear.  Everything else was noise and bad luck that would NEVER happen to me, the fit and flexible former gymnast 

[yagen]

Glad to hear you,

How many Guichet´s patients did you speak before surgery?
Is Guichet doing anything to help you?

You are so brave.

Look at this news maybe can help you. Now they can shape a bone with a 3D printer from a bone of dead people.
https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/madrid/2017-08-07/bancos-huesos-tejidos-madrid-alcorcon-gregorio-maranon_1418870/

My best wishes

[Bander72]

Hi Penguinn,

Yeah, lots of updates!   Since I last saw the new doc at Kings College Hospital, she had in the space of 2-3 weeks ordered up about 12 tests immediately.  I've now done full bloods, xrays, CT scans, physio, therapist, ultrasound, vernacular scans etc.  I'm so impressed seeing that everything has been free, speedy, polite and super efficient.

Having spoken to a few patients at the department, it turns out that it's well known for being super professional and effective.

That said, I've not had any glimpses of the results yet.  All I know is I no longer have any blood clots, there are no cysts growing in my lengthened gap.  I'll be seeing the doc in person tomorrow and I'll post what she says.

A few things I have learnt : no matter which doctor you go to, please always ask for second opinions.

I learnt that there is NO WAY a marrow graft can fuse a 7-10cm gap.  Also the fact that I underwent a marrow graft procedure on a leg that has runaway from 7 to 10cm with nobody noticing  - is downright scary.  There were ample xrays prior and post surgery so you'd think anyone responsible would check for length, if not out of professional obligation, perhaps out of courtesy seeing that this entire surgery costs an arm and a leg (no pun intended). 

You'd think that anyone who performs surgery claiming extensive experience, would check before and after that there's no runaway lengthening since I had reported accidental clicking since last year and there are no calluses/non-union formed at all.  I was even put on a 3 clicks/day schedule from April on.  It was actually the A&E folks at NHS who measured my xrays and said I was close to 10cm.

It befuddles me whether I was intentionally put through a useless surgery for financial gain or did a world-class surgeon actually believe that a marrow graft can fuse 7cm when the entire world knows that it cannot?  That was one unnecessary pain and cost

I've also met up with more LL patients in these last few weeks and it is so true that the garish stories do not go published for fear of doctors or shame.  An example : One LL patient recently committed suicide and another suffered life altering gangrene infections which required flesh being grisly carved out on a daily basis.

We all noticed that when LL patients undergo racheting, the pain is so intense that everyone is crying all the time taking hours to click but once the entire ordeal is over, people tend to understate how painful or how much they suffered.  I guess it's human nature,  I don't know.  Nobody wants to admit to being a coward and a crybaby perhaps.  And our brains quickly surpress those traumatic memories anyway, as self preservation.

Clear example is the guy I had first met at Isokinetic when I went through my first cyber test who told me that the pain was so negligible, the cyber test was more painful.  It turns out that he bare face lied to all of us (us being the gullible pack of bankers, lawyer and a doctor).  When we confronted him later, he said he didn't want to scare us (!).  In addition, we found out later that he was addicted to opioids as well. 

So you cannot trust one source of info, and I definitely did.  I heard only what I wanted to hear.  Everything else was noise and bad luck that would NEVER happen to me, the fit and flexible former gymnast 

More and more evidence of mongeals incompetence. How can all these issues be attributed to his arrogance?

[Body Builder]

More and more evidence of mongeals incompetence. How can all these issues be attributed to his arrogance?

You mean Guichet.

And yes, what Unicorn said supports my words that Guichet is the worst doctor available for the money he wants.

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Glad to hear you,

How many Guichet´s patients did you speak before surgery?
Is Guichet doing anything to help you?

You are so brave.

Look at this news maybe can help you. Now they can shape a bone with a 3D printer from a bone of dead people.
https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/madrid/2017-08-07/bancos-huesos-tejidos-madrid-alcorcon-gregorio-maranon_1418870/

My best wishes

I was stupid, I only met with 2 patients, one at the cybex test who lied and another at the gym who was labeled 'crazy' (it turned out that every single thing she said was spot on - we just didn't believe her at the time because it sounded so preposterous and dramatic, and she was always angry and ranting nonstop). 

The fact that they were both hopping around in zimmer frames a week after surgery impressed me to no end.

I had actually met another potential LLer in the waiting room during my first appointment and both of us kept in touch afterwards.  Based on miraculous recovery videos we were shown where people were jumping 2 weeks after stopping lengthening, we were under the impression that 60 days post surgery, we would begin to walk without crutches, and soon enough, go back to normal life (read my posts earlier on back in Sep'16)

Beware of any videos which seem too good to be true.  We both left Princess Grace with stars in our eyes and dreams in our hearts.  This potential LLer even texted me that night asking if it was all too much of a hard sell.  I dismissed him and was super determined to have my legs broken next.

How wrong I was.  And naive too.  Even without major complications, one does not recover so quickly back to normal walking and gait because all the soft tissues are too short and takes a lot of time to stretch out.

Hence, the final road to recovery after lengthening stops, do include overcoming pelvic tilts, duck ass, internal hip rotations etc due to short front muscles, weak abs and glutes etc among other things.  And these take months not mere weeks to regain normalcy.

[Bander72]

More and more evidence of mongeals incompetence. How can all these issues be attributed to his arrogance?

Ah lol I did confuse mongeal with guichet . It does some seem with his recent cases that mongeal is more competent than guichet.

[Body Builder]

Ah lol I did confuse mongeal with guichet . It does some seem with his recent cases that mongeal is more competent than guichet.

Personally I would much easier consider Monegal than Guichet.

[cobalt]

Thanks for the update. Glad you are making progress in posture(from ur instagram) and improving little by little in exercises and physical therapy. You will get there, hang on. Rooting for you.

[LLSouthAmerica]

Hey, Unicorn. I hope you are getting better with each passing day. It is a normal reaction to be angry when having pain, or difficulties. I think it is all the more reason to believe a person when she/he has such an emotional response.

While it is true there are a lot of "miraculous" very fast recoveries and early weight bearing, the potential for runaway lengthening and non-union without the possibility to compress the gap is something to consider. Also, the pain is something that Dr Guichet attributes to "stress". Even if I didn't have a lot of pain, I knew when seeing the faces of the rest of the patients that it hurt and it wasn't something that should be dismissed as "stress", "psychological issues", being weak. It is very real!

Finally one should inform oneself about every detail possible about the surgery. If you are a woman, smoker, Asian, old age, diabetic; please think twice about this surgery, or choose an external method or precise and ensure that your distraction rate is very slow and your target gain is also conservative. Do not put yourself totally in the hands of any doctor. Research, discuss, have an opinion about your own case. It is your life that is at stake, there is no one better to take care of yourself than you.

And to all of you, even if Precise goes up to 8 cm if Betz and Guichet allow to lengthen 10 cm with one surgery, try not do it. Keep in mind that every cm exponentially increases your recovery time!!!

[helloworld]

Thanks for sharing your personal experience, Unicorn!
Your experience is quite negative, so if I would have read your diary when considering surgery, I likely would not have gone ahead.
However, I am happy that I did and all the patients I met that had the surgery at a similar time as me, around 8 in total, are all very happy. Also, nobody had a lot of pain, and clicking was totally painless.
Only thing for me is that recovery took longer than expected. Even now, more than 8 months post surgery, though I have regained full strength and jumping power, I am still not able to run very fast. But all in all, the pros for me and for almost every patient I met, outweigh the cons.

[IwannaBeTaller]

I learnt that there is NO WAY a marrow graft can fuse a 7-10cm gap.  Also the fact that I underwent a marrow graft procedure on a leg that has runaway from 7 to 10cm with nobody noticing  - is downright scary.  There were ample xrays prior and post surgery so you'd think anyone responsible would check for length, if not out of professional obligation, perhaps out of courtesy seeing that this entire surgery costs an arm and a leg (no pun intended).

So if a graft doesn't work, what is the next plan to finally fix your 10 cm gap?

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

Thanks for sharing your personal experience, Unicorn!
Your experience is quite negative, so if I would have read your diary when considering surgery, I likely would not have gone ahead.
However, I am happy that I did and all the patients I met that had the surgery at a similar time as me, around 8 in total, are all very happy. Also, nobody had a lot of pain, and clicking was totally painless.
Only thing for me is that recovery took longer than expected. Even now, more than 8 months post surgery, though I have regained full strength and jumping power, I am still not able to run very fast. But all in all, the pros for me and for almost every patient I met, outweigh the cons.

Haha!  This definitely sounds like a Monegal sponsored ad 

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

So if a graft doesn't work, what is the next plan to finally fix your 10 cm gap?

Just got back from the doc.  She had kindly arranged an appointment with the non-union guy who recommended me as well.  So we had a chance to catch up.

Basically, my 13mm nails are not appropriate for a small asian girl like me.  It's probably caused the eggshell fracture at reaming and later, full fracture.

She says the distraction rate was probably too fast especially since I was distracted 150mm during surgery and then close to 2mm per day in the first 1-2 weeks with no settling time.

That said, not much can be done about my non-union for now.  So she's going to do a biopsy and during that procedure do a bone graft as well.

If that doesn't work, she'll have to change to trauma nails and during that process, apparently bone healing gets restimulated.  She'll try to keep my height but might have to shorten to about 6cm.

She just doesn't want to do anything to compromise my left leg which seems to be consolidating well.  It would be a shame that I've to operate and shorten the left one as well.

She says I've to be prepared for the long haul as there is simply no short cut miracle cure out there for me 

[helloworld]

Haha!  This definitely sounds like a Monegal sponsored ad 

I am wondering why you would say or think that.
Is it that I thank you for sharing your experience? Or is it that I express my frustration with not being able to run as fast as before?
Maybe you misread, I am not saying I am running faster, I am saying I am running SLOWER!

[Unicorn888 by Elaine Foo]

I am wondering why you would say or think that.
Is it that I thank you for sharing your experience? Or is it that I express my frustration with not being able to run as fast as before?
Maybe you misread, I am not saying I am running faster, I am saying I am running SLOWER!

Look, whoever you are, I'm most happy that you've completed your lengthening unscathed and successfully.

But please, if you would like to promote Monegal's business by stating that for all 8 of you, "clicking was totally painless" - PLEASE do it somewhere else because you are insulting our intelligence with your transparent motives.  It is people like yourselves who mislead others into thinking that this procedure is easy and painfree.

It is damned disrespectful to use this very thread to promote another doctor's practice.  It is never a GUICHET vs MONEGAL battle here, and I don't see other insecure doctors like PALEY sending their minions over to promote their dwindling businesses while bashing other doctors.

I'm sorry for you that your recovery has not been as fast as you hoped for, and I'm sure since Monegal has a perfect record of success, not being able to run faster than Usain Bolt after leg lengthening must be contrued as a complication. 

In any case, when you pass GO, don't forget to collect $200 from Monegal.

[LLSouthAmerica]

Look, whoever you are, I'm most happy that you've completed your lengthening unscathed and successfully.

But please, if you would like to promote Monegal's business by stating that for all 8 of you, "clicking was totally painless" - PLEASE do it somewhere else because you are insulting our intelligence with your transparent motives.  It is people like yourselves who mislead others into thinking that this procedure is easy and painfree.

It is damned disrespectful to use this very thread to promote another doctor's practice.  It is never a GUICHET vs MONEGAL battle here, and I don't see other insecure doctors like PALEY sending their minions over to promote their dwindling businesses while bashing other doctors.

I'm sorry for you that your recovery has not been as fast as you hoped for, and I'm sure since Monegal has a perfect record of success, not being able to run faster than Usain Bolt after leg lengthening must be contrued as a complication. 

In any case, when you pass GO, don't forget to collect $200 from Monegal.

I think by now it is plenty obvious that Dr. Monegal is making their patients do marketing for him. However, I don't think you need to fight them in this thread so long as we all ignore them and focus on your case.

I think part of the reason of your complications in Dr. Guichet overconfidence and greed. Because he most likely noticed that the 13 mm nails was too much but he probably had cases in which nothing happened. Reducing the diameter of the nails would mean to reduce their strength which would nullify the only benefit of Guichet Nail.

[Bander72]

Yes both sides cooper and mongeal go to extremes.