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[brokeboy]

Hey all, it's been about a month since my op, giving back and contributing to this forum as I found other LL'ers' threads here very useful in my journey.

Background:
Chicago, Mid 20s, 5'2-5'3, I'll just stick with 5'3 bc we're always wearing shoes outside lol.  Being short never really hindered me from anything (friends, leadership positions in college, career, attracting shorter/same height/taller women); just thought being taller would be a good investment to make things easier down the line so I rolled with it.  I been into fitness and lifting for 5 years since college, pretty flexible, I stretched everyday, so I was pretty fit and flexible going into this (135lbs, max bench 215, 6 pack abs, have done bulk/cut cycles, while stretching I can touch the palms of my hand to the ground, this is just to give you an example of what type of fit/flexible I am).  I drink alot also (during college and after college almost every weekend, pounding on avg 8+ shots on a night out), but it died down after quarantine started.  I usually can hold my liquor but I've had a fair share of puking my guts out, you'll see why I mention this later in the diary. Enough about me let's move on to the LL journey.

I actually came across LL in March 2020 browsing the web; with COVID-19 precautions (remote work) extending into 2021 I thought it was the perfect time to go ahead with it, so I scheduled consultation and surgery with Dr. Mahboubian in October.  Booked airbnb 10 mins away from Dr. Mahboubian's office for the duration of the procedure, drove to LA, had the consult and did all the pre op stuff within the week.

Day of procedure:
Took a lyft to the hospital, arrived at 5:30AM, had my walker with me.  Changed into gown, they wheeled me into the op room.  I remember thinking "yea there go that anestesia ik im bouta pass out and wake up with it all over in 3..2..1.." then I woke up and felt like I had a wild night out (ya'll ever drank so much you wake up still drunk? yea i have multiple times, it feels exactly like that). My legs felt heavy and sore, but not really painful.  When they hit me with the dilaudid, it made me extremely nauseous, this is why I mentioned drinking alot, these feelings relate pretty well to my nights out.

I was wheeled into my hospital room, knew it was boutta come up so I asked for a yak bag, tryna hold it down (thank god I had practice from all those nights going from the club back home in an uber, I wasn't gonna pay $150 for yakking in an uber).  Nurse was just chillin sayin she'll get it, until I gagged super loud and she ran to get me one.  Finally got a hold of it and yakked into the bag.  Lemme tell you, yakking bc of the dilaudid felt like a cakewalk compared to yakking with vodka, tequila, or some dark in your system.  When you're yakking alcohol it burns on the come up and inside your nose, and bc of that my contractions are usually a lot more violent and its back-to-back so there's no time to breathe.  When I yak from alcohol I literally think "omg Im about to die" while gasping for air, but yakking from the pain iv I thought "oh this not bad at all".  I yakked a couple times until they changed it to morphine (dilaudid is too strong), I stopped getting nauseous.  Just thought it was a funny comparison.

Honestly felt little pain, moreso discomfort, just felt like I did a heavy leg day at the gym.  PT came in later and asked if I could get up and walk, I said sure lets try it.  He helped me outta bed and sure enough I was walking up and down the hall with the walker, no pain really -just hard to get out of bed cause you can't really move your legs on their own, had to use a towel underneath your legs or lift them with your arms.  I used the pain button for morphine maybe 3-5 times a day, on the last night just 2 times.  I couldn't really eat for the first day and a half.. had a couple bites and mostly the jello but thats it.  Second half I could eat almost everything.

I did have a problem with the catheater, there was a a bend and I told the nurse my bladder full, checked it out and straightened out the tube, felt alot better.  Taking out the catheater, yo that was sumn else, I think that was the most painful thing I felt during the hospital stay tbh lol.

Spent 2 nights and 3 days in the hospital, I didn't hire a caretaker so I was just gonna uber/lyft home.  Hospital people are extremely nice (really liked all my nurses and PTs) and the case manager hooked me up with a medical transport home so I didn't needa get an uber.  Got home and still felt little pain.  That concludes consult, surgery and hospital stay.

[StrydeNailChallenge]

Hey all, it's been about a month since my op, giving back and contributing to this forum as I found other LL'ers' threads here very useful in my journey.
...That concludes consult, surgery and hospital stay.

Hey brokeboy,  just read your notes! Wish you the best. Let me know if you need help with anything while in LA. I know it must be tough dealing with post-op stuff just by yourself.

SNC

[brokeboy]

Week 1:
I meal prepped before the op so my fridge was stacked, didn't need/hire a caretaker, I slept on the couch bc it was alot easier to get up and lay back down from.  To take a #2, I'd put the walker over the toilet and sat down on it using the walker as support, getting a foot rest was necessary (my toilet pretty high), i used my luggage lol. 

I was taking the norcos to prevent pain, maybe every 5 hours, but slowly weened off it, taking 1 during the day and 1 before bed.  I think day 2 after the hospital discharge I just felt really good so I started doing assisted squats with my walker, bad move.  It aggravated I believe the ligament or my IT band on the outer side of my right knee, but using Aspercreme with Lidocaine on it virtually erased the pain temporarily.  2 days later the pain was gone.

Day 7 from the op date I took a lyft to Dr. Mahboubian's office got the new erc device, wheeled it out and got a lyft home (pushed it in front of my walker into my airbnb, thank god it was on wheels), started distracting 4 times a day 6 hrs in between for first 5 days.  Then it was 3 times a day 8 hrs in between.  Making sure to take Vitamin D and calcium.  I was told my knee bend flexibility was pretty bad, I couldn't get it to 90 degrees.  So over the next week I worked pretty hard on stretching it, sitting knee slides, icing down the quads (which were the primary inhibitors of bending my knee).

Day 9 I went back to work remotely, no issues concentrating or focusing tbh, did my work just fine (I'm a software engineer).
Day 14 I got my sutures removed.

Week 3:
I transitioned to my bed, there were days I went without taking norco, or just taking advils (I think the anti-inflammatory helped my swelling go down).  I was usually waking up in the middle of the night to pee, and usually only getting 5-6 hrs of sleep before waking up with leg pain that was typically resolved by just getting up and stretching out.  I usually only sleep 6-7 hrs so it wasn't really a big deal for me. My lengthening schedule is usually 6am, 2pm, 10pm, I go to sleep around 11pm-12am.  I stretch before and after lengthening.  During this week sometimes I get random muscle spasms after lengthening, but it usually stopped after an hr.  I don't really get it anymore so I think I was just putting too much weight on my leg. Knee bend at 90, past 90 if I'm using the floor while sitting on a seat at this point.

I got my xrays this week, I was told everything looked good, Dr. Mahboubian is pretty cool I like his personality.  I actually drove to his office, this was day 23 I believe.  Then my girl visited me so I drove around LA, got some food.  Sitting in a car longer than 15 mins pained the ligament on the inner side of my left knee, it hurt pretty bad and the norco/pain cream didnt help, only standing and letting it stretch out resolved it.  I also drive a stick shift so that probably contributed to it.

Week 4:
Transitioned to crutches, probably could've done it before but I wasn't really in a rush to switch or anything.  I could walk around with 1 crutch at the crib, and take couple steps unassisted.  Don't really wanna push myself, I honestly take a different approach than most others I see on here, trying to not push myself and allow my legs to heal rather than go aggressive on PT exercises (my legs were pretty strong before the op).  I do stretch pretty often though, multiple times a day.

This week I had my first PT session at Dr. Mahboubian's, I usually just do it myself but doc recommended me to start so I'm going to do a couple and see if I still need to keep going in for it.

I'm getting numbness on my left shin/tibia, sometimes its a tingly numbness when sitting down with my legs out on my bed.  When sitting in a chair it gets to be a burning numbness and the ligament on the right side of my left knee starts hurting like it did when driving, so I try to improve my sitting tolerance by doing it a couple times for 5 minutes a day.  It only hurts and I feel the burning numbness when I approach the 5 minute mark while sitting.

Other than that I'm taking advils, tylenol for muscle pain, sometimes norco.  Not really any serious pain, moreso constant discomfort.

[brokeboy]

Hey brokeboy,  just read your notes! Wish you the best. Let me know if you need help with anything while in LA. I know it must be tough dealing with post-op stuff just by yourself.

SNC

Thanks SNC, followed your journey, hope you're doing well post-distraction!

[brokeboy]

I think one of the most helpful resources on this forum is @Movie 's videos, they're forreal priceless, big s/o to him, so I'll try to give ya'll some vids also.

This is day 33 post-op, walking with and without crutches, also going up and down a step:

https://imgur.com/a/TlSUpcr

[BelowTheMean]

Nice, another Stryder lengthening at the same time. I'm three weeks behind you though. Sending a PM.

[ghkid2019]

Thank you for this diary richboy.

I will say one thing and it's to take it easy with weightbearing and any supplements like calcium or vitamin d, big risk being early consolidation, which i have seen quite a few more recently at Dr. M's, but you probably already know given that you mention you take a different approach and go with the flow instead of angry man aggressive rehab which I agree with

also can tell ur not a boomer but still very young based on your vocab and casualness so hopefully this will be Movie Jr. in terms of recovery and age and i think you are very very fit given u can bench that much and have abs and 

Dr. Mahboubian is pretty cool I like his personality.

This is funny its like a soft rejection haha ha ha

anyways i will keep following u recently not too many good diaries but this is great

[Movie]

I think one of the most helpful resources on this forum is @Movie 's videos, they're forreal priceless, big s/o to him, so I'll try to give ya'll some vids also.

This is day 33 post-op, walking with and without crutches, also going up and down a step:

https://imgur.com/a/TlSUpcr

Thanks for the shout out brokeboy, lol

You're doing great, moving pretty good, similar to me at that stage I'd say. I see you can get up and down from steps nice, keep going.

[ghkid2019]

Thanks for the shout out brokeboy, lol

You're doing great, moving pretty good, similar to me at that stage I'd say. I see you can get up and down from steps nice, keep going.

Oh my god that gif looks identical to the one you (Movie) posted in your own diary early on. Ground shot of walking with crutches lmfaoo kinda funny

[brokeboy]

Week 5:
Ligament on right side of my left knee stopped hurting, practicing my sitting tolerance helped I believe.  Numbness on left shin has gone down considerably.  I still felt that my thighs were swollen and tight at times.  This pushed me to keep stretching.

I continued to stretch everyday, doing an hour of PT -30 minutes was dedicated to stretching, I started incorporating 15 minutes of walking down the block and back.  When I got back I'd ice down my quads.  Throughout the day I'd do random sets of 2-3 to stretch my hamstrings/quads, I think this is important.

Something I learned: I tried comparing taking acetaminophen to advil (NSAID), taking tylenol alone doesn't really help with the pain in my experience.  In the mornings, I would take 2 advils (after eating breakfast so it doesn't irritate my stomach) and my legs would feel great.  Again, I think it helped bc it diminished the swelling (which I think is bc of inflamed ligaments/muscles/w.e.) being that it's also anti-inflammatory. 

When I needed to, I would take my norcos, usually it would be when I wake up at night and my legs hurted.  Sometimes I would take it during the day, I would take it as needed, I wasn't trying to just stay off it.

Still waking up mostly once at night, I'd rub my legs really hard and fast to get blood flow running through it and bending them to stretch my quads.  After doing it for a couple of minutes I am usually ok enough to fall back asleep, sometimes I'd have to pop a norco.

By the end of this week I started getting random pangs in my right knee, moving it in some directions id get a pang, but it wasn't too painful, it kind of told me something was wrong.  It's either that or I think I may have a high tolerance to pain, I just feel that most of my experience during LL is that my muscles just feel "sore" or tight, or those "pangs" are just pangs that don't really hurt.  Either way I followed what I did when I had random muscle spasms - I kept off my right leg and tried not to put too much weight onto it.  When I stretched that leg, I'd stretch it slowly.  3-4 days later the pangs were mostly gone.

I feel that if you were adamant and knowledgable about fitness (and taking your needed supplements) before this surgery then it may make this experience easier.  I've experienced muscle injury, extreme muscle soreness, a bad back injury that resulted in my muscles "knotting" up and muscle spasms that kept me from tying my shoes or bending over a certain degree (fortunately resolved after a year), let alone the soreness isolated to each muscle group every day for the past 5 years.  I think its sort of like going through a training regimen, this already conditioned the body to get used to the tearing of muscles, rebuilding, and recovery.  Doc M said that when he was cutting my femur it was incredibly tough, I think leading a healthy, fit life style contributed to building a strong body.  By already conditioning the body, it makes sense that going through a trauma that requires the body to heal will be easier than if your lifestyle was sedentary, most likely resulting in less pain experienced.

Long story short, if you led a (very) active lifestyle (and ofc being young helps, this is shown through factual research and statistics on healing in general), I believe your body is better conditioned and positioned to handle this than those that led sedentary life styles.

Week 6:
I hit 40mm, the halfway mark, at the end of this week!

This week I continued to do my PT regimen, I also went to PT in the office, it helps to have a physical therapist stretching you out and pushing your stretches.  It also helps to see what type of PT exercises to do and what it will help/accomplish.  I ask the physical therapist alot of questions, he's been a great resource.  My butt muscles atrophied alot and I needa start rebuilding them, they're so flat I feel like I'm sitting on my tailbone sometimes.

I was able to sleep through the night on some nights (granted I only sleep from 11:30pm to 5:45am, about 6 hrs).  Advils in the morning (and a heatwrap/massager around my thighs) makes my legs feel great (making sure to take the advils after putting something in my stomach), and I don't really take much norco, I think only three-four times this week.  So essentially just the advils in the morning, and maybe the norco when I wake up at night if needed.

I feel my left hamstring tight at times, need to focus on this a little more.

Saw Dr. M, had my xrays taken, everything looks good, a little too good.  My callous seems to be forming too well, I have to lengthen 4 times a day every 6 hrs for the next week, then back to 3 times a day.  I feel that I may have been consuming too much calcium and vitamin D so I'll ease up on that also.  Aside from that I've been sailing smoothly.  The biggest challenge is just trying to get my ROM back..a little frustrating that I used to be able to touch my heel to my butt but now it bends just a little past 90 at best.

[BelowTheMean]

Congrats on the halfway point! Great to hear that the numbness is down and that you're still on pace! Being young must be great for bone regeneration if you're ahead of schedule even when taking Advil. Good luck lengthening faster next week. You'll probably want to stretch even more than usual!

Regarding being in shape before doing LL, I completely agree. Being in good shape is helpful for CLL in so many ways: upper body strength lets you support yourself much easier when using walking aids, having lower body fat puts less unnecessary stress on your Stryde nail, and being in better cardiovascular shape helps you do more exercises and stretches without tiring yourself out.

[brokeboy]

Happy New Year!
Been a while since I updated but here are some highlights from the past weeks.

Week 7:
I had to start lengthening 4 times a day, it was definitely tough, everything felt tighter.  My flexibility of course got worse, sleep wasn't that great.  I was waking up maybe every 2 hrs in discomfort, it was frustrating.

Week 8:
Regressed back to 3 times a day, this week felt better, the tightness kind of eased up, but my flexibility was bad in my knee range of motion.  It was this week where I noticed that my left quad was now tighter than my right (I had better ROM on my left knee than my right).  Stretching and trying to get that knee bend further really hurt, especially at the PT sessions, but knew it was good for me.

Week 9:
While sleeping, if i laid straight on the bed, I'd get numbing sensations on my left shin, and I felt like a muscle was being pulled on my right quad just above the knee.  I had to start sleeping kind of sitting up, this helped alot.  I asked the PT and he said it was because everything stretched and especially the nerves at the hip flexors.  When I started sleeping sitting up a little, it helped alot with those issues.  Sometimes waking up I might've slept a little too straight and definitely felt the pull on the quads right above the knee, it was pretty painful, but it subsided once I sat up, bent my leg, and rubbed the area for a minute.

Week 10:
I got my xrays taken and unfortunately the Advils caught up to me.  Seemed like this time my bone growth was alot weaker than the last time I took xrays.  I think this was due to the combination of advils, reduced intake in supplements, and the week of accelerated lengthening.  I was told to stop lengthening for 2 days and load up on supplements, stop the advils, and resume lengthening 2 times a day for the rest of the ride.  To be honest, I was sad when I thought about the longer time, but after I stopped lengthening for 2 days, my legs felt so much better.  The 2nd day I was doing my stretches and it wasn't painful on my quads when I was pushing that knee ROM. I was also sleeping a full 7 hrs or so (woke up with my tailbone hurting though because my butt muscles still atrophied). I'm at about 68mm (at the end of this week) so almost done. 

Sitting in a seat (computer chair/car seat) where my legs aren't outstretched 180 degrees starts to hurt after like 7 minutes.  I think this is because of flexibility and my quads being stretched when I bend my legs.  I also sit with my legs outstretched in my bed for most the day.  It gets really difficult and hurts to drive longer than 10 minutes, I'd have to stop and get out and stand up after a while, maybe 20 minutes if I pushed it. On the bright side, I think this is better than having tight hamstrings, my PT told me some start to have a constant knee bend and can't get their legs straight, that would probably be detrimental to reaching the full 80mm.

One thing is I been just chilling on crutches so Ima try to start getting off them and work on walking without support, I think I been lazy on this compared to others' diaries lol.  Thats all so far, looking forward to wrapping this up soon.

[Movie]

Nice progress! I also suffered from that same phenomenon of serious pain on the leg that presses the gas pedal and break after driving about 15 minutes, would have to get out and stretch and take tylenols.

[SpeedDialer]

Movie, there is something I have been wondering about for a while. I imagine I am mistaking for a different Movie, but did you fight Flash in the 2009 Starcraft Ever OSL finals and why didn't you go with Donghoon Lee in Korea?

[ghkid2019]

brokeboy, if its hard to do much or walk with crutches then I recommend just standing often and just weightbearing if nothing else to do. That will build bone more. If just laying in bed then it'll reduce bone growth. Weightbearing is the number 1 factor in speeding up bone growth. anyways youre at 6.8 cm so that's almost done man. you're almost DONE. it will all be better soon

[permanentlybanned]

U okay bro? Hi brokeboy