Quick update - I drove down to Baltimore Sunday night and met with Dr. A and team yesterday at his facility in Owings Mills. This is in the suburbs of Baltimore in a fairly nice neighborhood in a higher end and newer strip mall (yay America!) and I highly prefer this location to Sinai Hospital because it feels like less of a "medical" setting and more like an office.
While it would be much cheaper to simply do X-rays where I live and send them over to Dr. A for review, the experience is so much better in person, particularly at Owings Mills. For any Dr. A patients, I highly recommend you visit in person once every few months during the consolidation phase, particularly early in the process. The staff is friendly, the standing X-ray machine is seamless (no weird contortions while laying down on a table as with normal machine), and the stadiometer is highly accurate. Moreover, being in person gives Dr. A and team the ability to thoroughly evaluate the patient's gait and movements and offer suggestions on where to focus.
Everything looks ok but not spectacular. Bone growth is better than before (although not fantastic), but muscles - IT band, hip flexor, glutes, - are pretty tight for this stage in the process. My major takeaway is that I've probably hit a point of diminishing returns on things just automatically getting better - going forward, I will need to work harder at PT to maintain my rate of recovery. Dr. A estimated that my gait will likely normalize with three months of dedicated work of 1+ hour per day of PT.
Dr. A showed me some new stretches and recommended I purchase one of these (
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T4JFQKM?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details) to really work on my hip / IT band tightness.
One of the happier outcomes from the visit is that, although I am still "unraveling" and not at my full height because of the lingering duck ass, I have reached nearly 173cm or 5'8 even. Since I started at around 164cm and expected to hit 172cm at best, I am beyond delighted with this outcome. How did this happen? Dr. A explained that due to the way the osteotomy is performed, the bone is straightened / aligned, which can account for up to 7mm of additional height. Thus, I must have started at around 164.3, and with 8.7cm of total lengthening ended up at around 173 (and counting!). I can not put in words how psychologically gratifying it is for me to hit 5'8, and the feelings of "normalcy" which that engenders.
As always, let me know any questions or feel free to DM me!
Author
Topic: LL experience overview: bilateral femurs with Dr. Assayag 9/22 (Read 5321 times)