Hi, I'm Thao from Limb Lengthening Center Vietnam. Usually, we don't interfer with the patient diaries however for this diary I must correct a few things so everyone have a full picture of the story.
1. This person do not eat enough nutrition during lengthening. He only eat once per day and each time he eat it is fast food. He don't eat fruit, drink milk or the food we provide at the center. The helpers report that his food is untouch everyday. So I was worried about him and I asked him if there is anything else he want to eat, any fruit that we can give him, we will buy and prepare it for him seperately and free. However he always refuse and said he don't want to eat anything else. We can't force him to eat so he lose a lot of weight during lengthening
2. After the frame removal, we were worried about him so we told him we will do a bone graft surgery to help his bone growth. And we use artificial bone because the gap of his leg is large and we don't want to use the illiac crest because we don't want to cause another wound on his body if necessary. Because bone harvest at the illiac crest is dangerous as well. If not done carefully, when he walk, he will have hip pain. And this surgery is free. We don't charge him anything.
3. After return to Japan, because he continue his eating habit so the bone cannot growth in long term. And also the exisiting bone is weak so it can't hold the screw and cause the top of the nail to slip up.
4. He then report about this problem with us. And come back to Vietnam to fix it. We purpose to put on a frame back and lengthening the nail down again and also return the 1cm lost on his right leg + do bone graft with HA + TCP. Because we don't want to use the illiact crest area. And all these extra surgeries fee, hospital stay, medicine, accomodation, etc is all free.
5. He disagree with the plan treatment. Saying he visit lots of doctor in Japan and they all advise him to do illiact crest bone graft. So we explain because the area at his bone is very large, and we can't harvesh that much bone at the illiact crest. So it must be a combination of autograft + HA and TCP graft.
So finally he agree with this plan. But refuse to relengthening the 1cm short.
6. We finish doing this second surgery for him without charge him anything as well. For the operation, the surgery fee, the medicine, and everything else. All he has to do is buy his own air ticket + visa fee.
7. After return to Japan this time, since the surgery is very sucessful, his bone start to growth on both left leg and right leg. Everything is going well as planned. So he asked me to send him set of tool for nail removal. Because he will have nail removal surgery in Japan. He don't want to come to Vietnam for nail removal. I understand and said I will assist. So I send him a set of tool for nail removal (Didn't charge him anything as well even shipping fee).
8. After receive the set of tool for nail removal. I'm not sure what the doctor there and him discuss. But they remove the 2 bottom screw of the nail (Which use to lock the nail) by themself without letting us know about it. As the result, because the 2 bottom screw is gone now, the bone at the middle collaps and he lost another 1cm on the right leg. And because the bone collaps, it create a force to break the top screw as well.
9. He contact us again asking for a set of new screw. And told us what happened. We said because another doctor has do operation on your leg without us knowing anything about it so we have to terminate the insurance terms on the contract. However we will still send you a set of new screw free of charge to help you.
10. After he receive the set of screw, the last time I speak to him is when the doctor in japan do another surgery on him to renailing and relengthening his right leg. Messing up the whole graft site that we just did a few months ago.
We try to advise him not to continue doing surgery (For his own good) because if the right leg only shorten 1cm so it is even with the left leg which in the long run may be good for him. He didn't listen. So we stop. Because as a health care provider, we can advise but can't force a patient to do anything.
As you know, limb lengthening is a major surgery which has many complications. We cannot guarantee 100% you don't have any problem during or after your lengthening time. What we can do is to make sure we have done everything possible to prevent the complication for you during surgery and time staying with us. And even if the unexpected happen and you have complication we will follow with you through the end as long as you still wanting to trust and work with us. We will never abandon our patient.
And even after all the help we give him, he still bad mouth us on every social channel that he can found try to do as much damage as possible and ruin our reputation. In all of his story, it is always us who is the evil one, cheap one who harm him trying to save money. If the Japan doctors remove the screw making his legs shorter. It is their one time mistake because they are expert in limb lengthening, he can forgive them. But because his malnutrition that his bone can't growth it is then because of us. So it is our fault so to punish us he will go everywhere to share a half story about his condition to warn other patients about our bad practice. I'm not sure why he is being like this. Maybe he needs to find someone to blame for all the hardship.
In conclusion, this is our one and final post about this story to give you a perspective about the whole situation. We will not comment any further unless he post something increadibly wrong about us. Because we want this to end here without escalate it further.
And Mr.T we still wish you a speedy recovery.