A fellow member of this forum sent me some questions, some of which I wasn't asked before. I was given the permission to post the questions here so that other members can benefit as well.
The questions:
Hi tiggy congratulations on gaining your desired height. I was wondering how your experience was with dr rozbruch, Also in your psych evaluation what do you think makes a person the right candidate for the surgery and get approved by your psych advisor. Also i wanted to know if there is any way you could describe the pain and discomfort during the course of your lengthening period. I am also considering dr rozbruch as my number 1 option for this surgery
My reply:
Overall my experience was good. If you are local to him and cost isn't an issue then I would certainly recommend him. He knows what he is doing, has expertise and follows a concervatice approach to lengthening (while this is not a bad trait to have given the horrible outcomes some have had with other negligent surgeons, my frustrations with this can be found in my diary). If either of the above are not checked off then I would suggest going with someone cheaper and just as safe. Even Paley is cheaper so that's something to think about. The cost of living in NY is very high unless you are willing to fly back and forth after the first month or so post op.
The psych evaluation, LOL- I'll be honest and say that in my opinion the psych evaluation is total bull . I think it's just a way for R to direct patients to his buddies so that they can earn extra cash on the vulnerability of his patients. The entire evaluation felt absolutely asinine to me. You are asked questions about why you want the surgery and then she asks you to look at images and then talk about what you are seeing. Then you are asked to draw images that you associate with some words she tells you. At the end of the "evaluation" she told me I'll receive her "assessment" of our meeting within a week, even though she did tell me I was good to go (yes this wasn't a newsflash to me). I have yet to receive her assessment lol. I just think if you are going to charge someone so much cash for 1 hr (I can't recall her fee exactly but I think it may have been like $500), the least you can do after putting the patient through all those exercises is at least some assessment of what your performance may have meant based on some psychological standard. But surely enough there was no reply from her after that meeting. Oh and even if you have insurance, she doesn't accept any insurance from dr R patients (do you think this surprised me? Lol). All of these lead me to believe this is just a ploy to drain us of cash. So unless you are a total mental case, you will "pass" with flying colors. Don't worry about that. Just have the cash.
If you read my diary, my pain level since the beginning hovered around 1 to 3 max. It only started getting worse after numbness and nerve pain started to kick in along with the burning sensation. This made it difficult to sleep at night because my shins felt like they were on fire. This was about a 5 level pain and about an 8 level discomfort. Keep in mind I have high pain tolerance also.
The overall pain with this surgery is difficult to describe. You got pins under your skin so for the first month or so it will be tough to sleep on your side. The pain is the regular type and nothing unique to this surgery. Think of getting hit by a bat (lightly lol) on the upper side part of your femur while you are under anesthesia and then waking up, suddenly feeling the pain and then having to try and sleep on that side at night. Obviously it's going to be painful and uncomfortable. In hindsight it's difficult to describe sensations of pain once the feelings pass because we tend to block those out as we recover. It's difficult for me to recall the pain now, except for the nerve pain and burning sensations perhaps because those are what really left their mark on my memory because of the higher pain. I don't even remember if I described the pain in my diary in detail as I was going through it but feel free to read it from the beginning.
At least for me ll was about 70-80% easier than I expected. Keep in mind I really prepared for the worst. I literally woke up from surgery and the first thing I did was to look down just to make sure I still had my legs. In fact up until I closed my eyes on the operating table I couldn't believe I was about to get my legs broken. I had an internal struggle with myself the entire time because I knew how bad things can be just from reading other people's diaries. Luckily all of worst case scenarios were avoided (except for the nerve pain, for which I wasn't mentally prepared because I just thought "this probably wouldn't happen to me so I'm good to go" and also because that sensation is very new for most people and you just don't know how it could feel) and if not for that, I would say this surgery for me was at worst a 3 on the pain scale. I also happened to have the nerve pain earlier and it seems more intense than so many other people who got femurs done. I guess it can't be all too easy! Hope this helps.
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Topic: Rozbruch- Internal Femurs with Stryde (Read 26879 times)