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[ShortLivesMatter]

Haha i saw you in radiology. You're looking good man!

Haha thanks bro! Your amazing LL thread was actually what led me to looking up and going with Dr. Rozbruch. I read you were pretty flexible to begin with so you probably didn't run into any knee bending issues or pain in the lower legs like I'm going thru right now.   

[lon chaney]

i'm a 5'5.5'' dude scheduled for surgery at the beginning of 2018, i don't remember rozbruch saying anything in particular about my flexibility during the consultation so i assume i'm average... in any case, anything 6feet or shortlives recommend to improve flexibility in a way that'll mitigate pain, or it's something out of my control?

[ShortLivesMatter]

i'm a 5'5.5'' dude scheduled for surgery at the beginning of 2018, i don't remember rozbruch saying anything in particular about my flexibility during the consultation so i assume i'm average... in any case, anything 6feet or shortlives recommend to improve flexibility in a way that'll mitigate pain, or it's something out of my control?

Congrats man, you will be in excellent hands! I would definitely work on stretching your hamstring as much as possible between now and then.

[Rod Thick]

Thanks for the updates. Keep up the good work. Stretch, stretch, stretch!

Curious if you have any further information on what the total amount your insurance company is going to cover?

[ShortLivesMatter]

Thanks for the updates. Keep up the good work. Stretch, stretch, stretch!

Curious if you have any further information on what the total amount your insurance company is going to cover?

Yeah it looks my insurance covered most of the hospital fees except a couple hundred dollars. As for the surgery they covered some of it and I'm responsible for 55k.

[Rod Thick]

Yeah it looks my insurance covered most of the hospital fees except a couple hundred dollars. As for the surgery they covered some of it and I'm responsible for 55k.

Your TOTAL out of pocket expenses for everything including surgery, x-rays, anesthesia, hospital, stay, nails, is $55,000?

[LAGrowin]

Hi, I just had a checkup at Dr. Rozbruch's office today. I have lengthened 3.5cm so far. Xrays showing good callus formation.  I have started to develop a little knee bending although I can still straighten my legs if I put effort into it so I need to work on keeping them as straight as possible.  Problem is if I keep my legs straight for too long sometimes I experience a painful tingling/burning sensation in my inner lower leg area .  Dr. Rozbruch says that happens from time to time and it's due to the sciatic nerve and should go away on its own. However we decided to slow down the lengthening rate to .66mm a day for a little while to alleviate the problem. I'll keep you guys updated.

Hi SLM, 

Glad to hear your doing well.  Thanks for the info about cost.  $55k is a heck of a deal through Rozbruch.

Can you tell us which insurance you have ?

How is the knee bend coming ?  Any improvement since you slowed to .66mm/day?

As always,  wishing you well!

[ShortLivesMatter]

Your TOTAL out of pocket expenses for everything including surgery, x-rays, anesthesia, hospital, stay, nails, is $55,000?

Yes.

[ShortLivesMatter]

Hi SLM, 

Glad to hear your doing well.  Thanks for the info about cost.  $55k is a heck of a deal through Rozbruch.

Can you tell us which insurance you have ?

How is the knee bend coming ?  Any improvement since you slowed to .66mm/day?

As always,  wishing you well!

I have unitedhealthcare. I'm still having knee bend so I'm putting some ankle weights on top of them to help when just laying on my bed. Slowing down to .66mm a day has helped with the pain but I'm supposed to go back to 1mm tomorrow, I'll see if the pain intensifies again

[Zeo]

Yeah it looks my insurance covered most of the hospital fees except a couple hundred dollars. As for the surgery they covered some of it and I'm responsible for 55k.

Wow this is amazing! I would definitely pay 55k to get surgery with Dr. Rozbruch. Can you tell us more about the process of getting insurance to cover that much? So theoretically if I sign up for united healthcare I can pay 55k to get LL with Dr. Rozbruch? Do you have united healthcare through an employer? Is it HMO or PPO? I planned on leaving my job when I started lengthening because they probably wont allow me to leave for a few months. So I would have to pay for united healthcare with cash and sign up during open enrollment. This is a purely cosmetic procedure right? and the insurance is ok with that?

Sorry for all the questions but if I could pay 55k to get surgery with Dr. Rozbruch it would amazing.

[Rod Thick]

Would you please provide a breakdown of the charges and what you personally had to pay out of pocket. For example-

Hospital $25k - Paid $5k

Anesthesia $10k - Paid $2k

Dr. Rozbruch $?

Thanks. This is the deal of the century for limb lengthening....

[ShortLivesMatter]

Wow this is amazing! I would definitely pay 55k to get surgery with Dr. Rozbruch. Can you tell us more about the process of getting insurance to cover that much? So theoretically if I sign up for united healthcare I can pay 55k to get LL with Dr. Rozbruch? Do you have united healthcare through an employer? Is it HMO or PPO? I planned on leaving my job when I started lengthening because they probably wont allow me to leave for a few months. So I would have to pay for united healthcare with cash and sign up during open enrollment. This is a purely cosmetic procedure right? and the insurance is ok with that?

Sorry for all the questions but if I could pay 55k to get surgery with Dr. Rozbruch it would amazing.

You should check if your specific insurance plan is listed under the hospital's accepted insurances here https://www.hss.edu/insurance.asp. This will be for the non surgical fees part.   THe other part is Dr. Rozbruch's surgical fee. If he's not in network (he was out of network for me), make sure your plan has some out of network coverage that will hopefully cover some of the costs for that part. Call his office to check.  Check out 6FeetSoon's LL thread, he was able to even get it a little cheaper than me.

I must stress however that you won't know how much everything will cost until after the surgery when all the insurance claims are process so you need to have 100k+ in reserve just in case nothing is covered.  But Dr. Rozbruch says usually insurance will cover some of it so take it as you will. You will have a good idea if your insurance will cover anything during your initial consultation as that is when you will get xrays taken, if they are covered by your insurance, you are on the right track. 

I was lucky that my employer granted me an extended leave of absence until I recover and get back to work  so I am still having my health benefits. If you have to quit your job, do it early in the month as most companies will let you keep your insurance til the end of the month after you quit.  Then have the surgery later that month while still being covered.  Afterwards you will either need to buy your own health plan or use COBRA to extend your employer's insurance, not sure which one is cheaper. This is for post op follow ups and x-rays and hopefully no complications. 

[biggerdreams]

Would you please provide a breakdown of the charges and what you personally had to pay out of pocket. For example-

Hospital $25k - Paid $5k

Anesthesia $10k - Paid $2k

Dr. Rozbruch $?

Thanks. This is the deal of the century for limb lengthening....

This breakdown would be very helpful.

[lon chaney]

how u doing, shortlives?

[ShortLivesMatter]

how u doing, shortlives?

I've just passed 5.2 cm of lengthening. I'm losing my range of motion pretty rapidly.  The knee bend issue has gotten worse, it's getting really hard to straighten the leg and I can't keep it straighten for long. On the opposite end I can only bend it to about 100 degrees. Obviously it's not going to get better until I finish lengthening and the muscles can catch up.  I hear this is common with femur lengthening? Would make sense as I already had tight hamstrings prior to the procedure. No signs of duck ass yet so that's good at least.

The pain is still located in the lower leg area running down the shin to ankle.  Absolutely no pain on the operated femurs and upper leg. It's not bad during the day but getting a full uninterrupted sleep is impossible for me due to the pain.

My legs look like twigs now and whatever barely there butt I had prior is now gone, flat as a board.  I'll probably try to get to 7cm and stop. The mental aspect of this is way harder than I thought, I want to get back to life soon. And this is me doing lengthening at home with family with Precise. I can't imagine the people staying in a foreign country for many months. I need to avoid facebook as seeing all the stuff my friends are doing that I'm missing out on is just making it worse lol. 

Since several people have asked for it, I'll take a look at all insurance finances/charges and post a breakdown. 

[lon chaney]

damn, i'm sorry, sounds like you're having a really tough time! not the most heartening update as my surgery date gets closer, although i'm still committed, and hoping i face less complications. i love my friends of course, but i also don't mind being alone (always something good to watch or read)... however, psychologically the sleep trouble kind of scares me. 7 hours per night is pretty vital to my wellbeing. are u still happy with and often communicating with rozbruch, has he said anything about why you're having trouble? anyway you've definitely motivated me to start stretching

[ShortLivesMatter]

damn, i'm sorry, sounds like you're having a really tough time! not the most heartening update as my surgery date gets closer, although i'm still committed, and hoping i face less complications. i love my friends of course, but i also don't mind being alone (always something good to watch or read)... however, psychologically the sleep trouble kind of scares me. 7 hours per night is pretty vital to my wellbeing. are u still happy with and often communicating with rozbruch, has he said anything about why you're having trouble? anyway you've definitely motivated me to start stretching

Haha no worries man, I'm still in good spirits, definitely no regrets.  I mean probably 90% of people will experience pain and lose range of motion thru the distraction phase unless they are extremely flexible/young which I am neither.  I'm still getting about 7 hrs of sleep, its just spread out in a 10-11 hr interval. 

[lon chaney]

right, i know lengthening presents challenges for everyone. it's good to hear u have no regrets and are doing ok. would u mind sharing your weight? are u on the heavier side? i'm in my early 20s and thin, which i hope puts me at an advantage 

[yyes]

Haha no worries man, I'm still in good spirits, definitely no regrets.  I mean probably 90% of people will experience pain and lose range of motion thru the distraction phase unless they are extremely flexible/young which I am neither.  I'm still getting about 7 hrs of sleep, its just spread out in a 10-11 hr interval.

How much did you end up paying out of pocket my friend? Glad everything went well.

[ShortLivesMatter]

right, i know lengthening presents challenges for everyone. it's good to hear u have no regrets and are doing ok. would u mind sharing your weight? are u on the heavier side? i'm in my early 20s and thin, which i hope puts me at an advantage

I weighed about 54kg/120lbs.

Here is the breakdown of what was charged to my insurance plan:

Anesthesia: 6.5k
Plan discount: 2.5k
Plan paid: 4k
Me: 0

Hospital fees including room and equipment: 88k
Plan discount: 45k
Plan paid: 43k
Me: 0

Surgery: 62k
Plan discount: 0
Plan paid: 7k
Me: 55k

[Shadow91]

Keep fighting budddy, you are almost there.Soon this will just be a distant memory.

[6FeetSoon]

SLM, sorry to hear you’re having a tough time. Just remember you’re in the best of hands and he wont let you do anything to hinder your longterm prospects. Happy to visit sometime soon. 5cm was probably the toughest spot (relatively speaking) but when i pushed through that, i was coasting. Keep at it!

[Dirona]

Hi 6FS,

I  currently live in Boston  but I am willing to make a trip to NYC to meet you sometime to discuss my LL options with Dr Rozbruch. Are you free sometime soon?

Thanks

[lon chaney]

happy november, shortlives... how you doing?

[ShortLivesMatter]

Thanks for the words of support guys . I had a checkup yesterday, am currently at 6.2cm and received good/bad news. The good news is my knee bending issue has improved since last time once I really stepped up the PT stretches to keep the legs straight.  I was at about 12 degrees of bending and now down to about 3.  The other good news is the constant sciatic pain on the lower legs has gone away so I've been completely off any painkillers.  The bad news is my bone formation has been slow. So due to that and my still present knee bending issue I've decided to go up another .5cm and then stop at 6.7cm.  Hopefully the bone formation will pick up afterwards. 

[lon chaney]

any idea why your bone formation's been slow?

[Megamuffin]

2.7 inches is not bad, especially since the rule of thumb seems to be to stop at 3 inches. Also think of it this way, you sacrificed three months of hardship for spending the rest of your life happier.

[myloginacct]

How have you been doing, man? I hope things are going well for you.

[ShortLivesMatter]

Things are going well, I stopped at 6.7cm as I wanted a faster recovery.  Each month of not working is costing me alot of money lol.  Completely pain free now and the knee bending issue is getting better everyday. I'm just working on standing/walking with the walker alot now to help speed up consolidation.  Hopefully I'll see some good bone growth during my checkup next week. 

[lon chaney]

right that makes sense about getting back to work, sorry if i was being too nosy / negative, glad to hear things are going well for you, i think just for me personally the full 3 inches is kind of crucial and i wanted to make sure i wasn't operating on bad info that 3 inches is (while not easily attainable), u know, attainable if u have a lot of time / energy, and i certainly will have ample time and expect i'll have the energy i guess

[ShortLivesMatter]

I had another checkup a couple of days ago, exactly 3 months post op. My knee bending issue has been fixed in my right leg while there is still a little bit of bending on my left which will be resolved pretty shortly. My bone growth while not great, has been good and in line with the normal time frame of 4-5 months before walking.  We will check back again at the 4 month mark.  So overall I'm feeling good, but not much going on until January.