The 1st Arrival Day at Instabul My arrival date at Istabul Airport is 10th May. I really want to complaint that WiFi didn’t work in the airport meanwhile I didn’t have a local SIM card (Buy a Vodafone card before your depature is needed), which means I have no ways to contact AFA. Fortunately, I appreciate an Indonesian guy shared his hotspot with me so I could phone the AFA team. It is so kind AFA offers a shuttle service, they directly bring patients to the hotel Bof Hotel Ataşehir (Haliç Sk, Tatlısu Mahallesi). The trip from the airport to the hotel needs 1 hour roughly.
Pre-Surgery Process and Time in Hospital Regularly, the surgery is arranged at 2-3 days after arrival and my surgery date is schedule on 14th May. And one day before the surgery, patients will go to the hospital Acibadem Saglik Grubu to have a PCR nucleic test,a blood test, a pre-surgery x-ray photo of the lower body and a face-face appointment with Dr.Innan. Particularly, during the appointment the maximum extension (normally <5cm on Tibia, <8cm on Femur) and method (LON or PRECISE 2) are determined and discussed. My goal is to lengthen my tibia up to 6 cm. Because my muscle is generally strong enough, therefore the goal is not constrained by Innan. (He is a conservative surgeon, you want 6cm, he proposes 5cm or 5.5cm ). `
After the surgery, I stayed in the hospital for 4 days (a care worker’s fee, food fees in hospital are included in the surgery cost). The memory in the hospital is fresh and unforgettable. I never came to a dream as my leg ached. The pain on pin sites was not intense but kept my mind awake, even I felt sleepy but could not fall asleep. Contramadals really help me to get through a hard time, but Dr.Innan is not willing to give patients more to avoid addiction of pain killers.
It is worthy mentioning that a friendly and responsible carer can help you a lot when unmovable. My carer looked after me for 10 days after leaving the hospital (the fees of 10 days are paid by patients). The expenses on a carer is expensive there, 100 USD per day. But it is true that my carer did most things for me ( laundry work, cooking, shopping .etc)
Lengthening The lengthening work started from 20th May.
During the whole lengthening process, I kept the distraction rate of 1mm per day until bone cracks were distracted up to 50mm. In the lengthening phase of the last 10mm, the rate is half reduced, 0.5mm per day. Totally 70 days are spent on lengthening time to achieve 6-centimeter distraction.
The lengthening process goes generally successfully, no occurrences of nervous pain. Only terrible thing encountered is one pin site was infected and caused very intense and long-lasting pains. It seems like infections are very likely to happen even no showering for two months. It deserves to mention that do not take a shower before pin sites are completely healed. In other words, make wounds far away from water.
No ballerina happened. However, after distraction of calves exceeded 5 centimeters, I could feel greater tension forced my heels to get away from the ground. Importantly, wearing a pair of splint at night can effectively stop ballerina (put the splint on as long as you can). I usually wore that 3-4 hours on the bed since the surgery. (the situation of ballerina can be improved after the removal of fixators ). To prevent the occurrence of ballerina, I used a walker to hang out for at least 40 minutes everyday and wore the splint for full nights after 5cm (5-6 hours).
AccommodationAs for the accommodation, AFA arranged all patients live in Bof Hotel Ataşehir. The fee of the accommodation varies, and is completely different depends on what type of rooms a patient live in. Currently the hotel provides two types of rooms, type one is a single room (having one bedroom), type two is a share room (having two bedrooms). Both the single room and the share room comprise a kitchen, a bathroom. The price now (2021/7) of the single room is 7500 TL per month (approx. 900 USD), the share room takes 8500 TL per month (approx. 1020 USD). It deserves to mention that, commonly two patients rent a share room together so that each one only pays half rent (510USD).
FoodHow to find food is a problem everyone here has to face. The AFA’s Package doesn’t include food. Regardless the hotel has a canteen and provide free breakfast and lunch to tourists, but none of us (Only Chinese patients) have that as Turkish food taste bad. Some guys order food on Yemeksepeti app (also daily necessities can be ordered), but the app doesn’t have English translation on restaurants’ menu, which means hard to precisely order the food you really want. Some patients only make a order from Burger King and Mcdonalds. For having formal Chinese meals, we ( totally six persons) hire a full-time cook and split the bill.
Fees of food is largely depends on personal eating habit. If you order food from delivery app, the food expenses ranged from 100TL-130TL (360USD~468USD per month) each day, more or less. To me, roughly 400 USD is spent on food each month.
Surgery CostLON- 17,000 USD, and for 3 there is a group discount about 10% (This excludes the removal of intraumedullary nails)
Precise-39,690 USD, for those who do the 2nd surgery in meanwhile gets 2000 USD off. On internal methods.
P.S
-2000 USD as deposit should be prepared before patients’ arrival. It is certain that deposit will be refunded without any reasons if patients don’t come.
-AFA provides online appointments and tranlsation to patients before they come to Turkey. The online appointments are settled on Monday and Tursday only. 300 USD is paid for an appointment.
-The fee of removing nails is not included in surgery cost. The price of nails-removal is 4000 USD.
-Service charges of transaction are charged from patients' account.
The price includes below:
-Doctor consultation
-2 X-Rays
-All tests and examinations
-4-5days hospital stay
-Hospital&Surgery costs
-Caretaker fees (24hours during hospitalization)
-Meals during hospitalization
-All the transportation and airport pick up
-Medicines, splints, wheel chairs or walkers
-All basic personal strecthing equipment
- Splints for those who lengthen tibias
-CPM for all in hospitalization period
-Doctor routine consultations check ups
-IT band release (if needed)
-Fixator removal for LON patients
- Routine bandage changing and dressings for LON
- 5 days (5 sessions) of physiotherapy for every week covering the whole time till the end of Lengthening
-1 session hydrotherapy(water therapy)for Precice 2 patients per every week till the end of Lengthening
Physical Therapy On weekdays 2-hour physiotherapy is arranged for each patient (LON or P2), in a training room. The training room is located in the B3 floor of the hotel. Also, 1-hour water therapy is offered to patients with P2, 1 session per week. The team currently has two professional physiotherapist.
The intensity of training is increased over time. The patients in initial time are required to do leg-rising, knee-bending and other simple exercises. A week later, they are required to wear sandbags, load ranged from 1 kg to 2 kg. As time goes by, they need to do exercises, such as squat, standing-up and walking without support (P2 patients are required to do walking or squat exercises in water).
To patients who have done LON on tibia, stretching exercise and strength training are most concentrated on. As ankles and knees are very stiff, normally there are a lot of activities applied on the stiff body parts in the 1st week to help the patients to recover their sporty ability(move and swing ankle, bend knees). It is a must to note knee-bending exercise can cause pain and discomfort. It took me 7-8 days to recover and was able to make knees have full-motion exercises. Personally, pilates exercise can facilitate knee-recovery. More, using a stretch board and a stretch belt can largely ease tightness of tendon and muscle on calves. And never forget wearing splints before sleep, I knew some girls in Livinglifetaller got ballerina just because they didn’t care about that (their heels were 2 or 3 cm away from the ground while walking).
To patients with Precise 2, their training is somewhat different. They do cycling and spinning more, and physiotherapist tend to have more graston treatment om their legs to relax soft tissues. In the hydrotherapy, the patients are able to have walking and squat exercise completely free, no concerns on P2 nails’ hardness as buoyancy offsets most body weight.
The physical therapy include items as follows:
-Stretching exercise
-Strength training
-Pilates
-Electrical therapy
-Acupuncture
-Graston Technique
-Water therapy
ContactAFA operator: Ozlem
Emial: info@afacosmeticsurgery.com
phone&whatsapp: +90 533 318 86 68
website:
www.afacosmeticsurgery.com
Author
Topic: Lon tibia by Dr. Muharrem Inan (Read 3940 times)