Hello, I am starting this diary as I am scheduled may 13th 2021 for lon femurs. I arrived to Istanbul on the 5th, it was long layovers and flight with some turbulence but I made it!
Originally I wanted to do tibia externals and later on do precice/stryde for femurs however they were recalled and doctor buldu only does monorails I believe so the only option is for LON and I did not want to do lon tibias as the insertion point is from the knee vs hip for femurs. I am a 23 year old male from the USA, originally Middle East born. I contacted the Dr directly, not the advertising team. Turkey was really my 4-5th choice. At first I had scheduled tibia for Russia with kulesh/solomin however I could not get approved due to COVID-19 for a visa and they were not willing to help. They didn’t contact the ministry of health affairs to get me approved under that special circumstance. Then I contacted parihar but same thing, could not get approved for a visa, parihar was willing to write the letter after I did a consultation but did not guarantee my consultation money (200$) back if it didn’t get approved and said it was a good chance it wouldn’t be and after seeing how bad the COVID situation was getting there even in the unlikely event I would get approved I didn’t think it was a good choice. Catagnis could not give me a date in the beginning of April because he said his hospital was limited for surgery because of covid, he messaged me a week before I arrived in turkey but I had to start lengthening the first half of may to be able to return to my business I had my employee take over while I am away and needed something set in stone so I had already went with dr.Buldu.
Eventually I settled for turkey 7.5cm-8cmLON Femurs, as it was still allowing tourists and had a very easy process. I had very mixed feelings about going with buldu but he was my only option for the time/schedule and opportunity I had to do this surgery so I ended up pulling the trigger, upon meeting with him it did relieve me a good amount, he seemed like a decent all around person. We did some tests and he said I was highly flexible, this is probably due to me doing wrestling and track in high school, and martial arts as I got a little older, then losing a lot of gains as I opened my business at 19 and have been working full time and have not hit the gym since. Some red flags went away definitely after meeting him, but not all. One of the things I was concerned about was some stuff didn’t really sound real in the forum, but I it was just my doubts. I’ll uploads screenshots of it but like for example
I brought 1/3 cash and planned on wiring the rest, when they did my covid test a few days before the scheduled date, and upon paying with cash at the hospital to dr buldus assistant (very tall girl named busa) I asked for a receipt but they couldn’t provide me one, so buldu ended up saying “no problem, just pay the cash amount after the surgery”. This is something completely unheard of in America. I ended up just having my wife record me counting the money and handing it to his assistant. Also I used XE.com to transfer the money and it was getting delayed and he said since it was already sent it will be fine. That is crazy to me, as in the USA doctors demand firm payment upfront even if you sent it unless it’s cleared they will not operate. My XE transfer got approved may 12 the day before my surgery. It caused me some stress because I wasn’t sure if Dr. buldu was serious about saying that and if he would actually operate without the transfer cleared or not. However I didn’t want to send it before meeting him as i am a cautious person and am not going to wire 18-19k usd ( 1/3 of my total savings) to a doctor in a foreign country I have never met.
After meeting with buldu the next day I met a heavyset 173cm patient who had surgery 8 days prior from Canada, and he really helped my nerves calm down a lot.
Once you schedule or pull the trigger it will make you rethink everything. I had nightmares once a while for the last couple months, almost every night I would think I am really doing this. Do I really need to pay all this money and go through all this suffering, just be happy with your height. However I did not change my mind about it. The day before the surgery is the worst mentally, knowing you’ll be put on anesthesia and have incision and osteotomy on your legs.
Honestly I was happy with a lot of things in my life and was blessed with a nice car, good looks, a wife beautiful inside/out however at 165-166cm my height just really bothered me. even at 173-174 you are considered on the shorter spectrum but you are not in the bottom 5th percentile, that is a height I could be comfortable at. I would be slightly short, not shorter than almost everyone I meet, and I would also be a few inches taller than my wife. Maybe down the road I would do 5-6cm tibias, but with 8cm lengthening, for me personally, it will take away 3/4 of my dysphoria. Height is just a number, a lot of the people on the forum
Are like anorexic that obsess about being a certain weight. It’s completely okay to be average, would I want to be 6ft? Yes! Can I be happy still at average height? Of course.
If I am average height whatever I lack for I make up with looks, style/clothing, driving an exotic car. I know this because before I was married I still managed to have genuine relationships with women that were very attractive at my height, I may have missed out on some or it might have been easier if I was taller but the point is, it was do-able while I was short ( I did wear 1.5 inch lifts to clarify ) and even with a couple women who were a few inches taller than me. As the saying goes man makes the clothes, clothes don’t make the man. You can still be an icon being short just like mayweather, el chapo, Napoleon, Tom hanks, Putin, Akon, Usher, the list goes on etc.
Tomorrow I will be going around noon to do some preoperative tests like xray, blood, etc. I paid 15k euros in total for the LoN package.
Here are Some tips/info
The people at the Hilton bomonti hotel and a couple other hotels treated us like royalty, they were so nice and friendly. People treat the foreigners very well here for the main part. I did not go out at night at all. Some parts look like a 2cnd work country but downtown and the main areas look very up to date although there aren’t parking lots and the infrastructure/buildings are different/built different.
People drive CRAZY here. I rented a car and wish I had got a taxi. Most of the cars are manual and I struggled a little because some of the city is very very steep and high hills. Mix that with traffic and it’s not a walk in the park.
the price goes up and down in usd. If I had done the surgery last year the price was .93 more or less for usd to euro. Now it is .82. The price for surgery was the same in euros but it raised in usd needed to get that amount of euro. The week before I came it was .85. If I had payed a week before, I would have saved slightly over 3% or about 500$ US Dollars. Same thing with doctors like giotikas that use euros. The United States Dollars value is dropping against the euro so something that is any amount in euro is getting more expensive if you live in the US.
If going shopping, once people realize you are American in certain places they will swarm you, I had literally 8-10 salesmen follow me around in the grand bazaar trying to sell me fake designer stuff, even one of them said to the other “get lost this is my customer”.
Few days before I arrived the city went on full lockdown but a few places like jewelry or clothing were still open. When on lockdown or pharamacys or restaurants are open on limited hours. I used yemeksepati to get food delivered.
If you bring cash the exchange rates at the airport are pretty bad compared to other places. You always get slightly less than the actual exchange rate, at atm or places that convert money.
I have piercings and tattoos and obviously don’t look Turkish so I kept getting stopped by police at checkpoints. Most of them were cool but one time I got stopped the guy said he smelled drugs in the car and ordered me out while he searched my rental with his group. The police here are pretty intimidating, they usually are a group of 3-4 with ak-47 or some other big gun. Usually one of them will speak English. It was definitely bias against me due to my tattoos and piercings. once he saw I had no drugs in the car he let me and my wife go but eyed us down aggressively as we left.
The food here is a lot different. It takes some getting used to, but it will have you going to the bathroom twice a day and sometimes 3 because it’s real food. The bread tasted weird as it doesn’t have sugar like America, which is actually good but it’s weird getting used to. A lot of stuff has less salt. I ordered a chocolate chip cookie from subway and it just had real cocoa chunks in it and not chocolate chips. It definitely takes a while to get used to the food.
If you’re having this procedure in another country it can feel very alienating and weird being in another country. It definitely did for me and my wife. I enjoyed some of it but I definitely miss being home a lot.
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Topic: LON Femur 7.5cm with halil buldu may 13th, 2021 God-Willing (Read 47840 times)