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[Medium Drink Of Water]

No, I've decided I don't want to post any photos of myself online.

[Medium Drink Of Water]

I just noticed if i put my foot up while sitting relaxed in a couch or even at the computer chair,
My Tibia is unproportioned long for my femur like it's a Tibia of a 5'11-6'0 guy.
And the femur of a under average guy. Maybe im seeing to much but putting your foot up is about 5 cm so adding another 2,25 cm on that would make it obvious no?

So i think i might go for femurs instead but that might look messed up when you walk.
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Also what was the mental part of this journey for you,

I mean the day you sat down and made that appointment from home to the doctor for visitation, Too actually being on the flight and then later on at the hospital talking to the doctor saying you want to pay large amount of money to lengthen/f**k up, your legs? How was his reaction on that.

And did you feel anxiety the first 1-5 days of actuall lengthening? Like what to do, and if you should call the doctor with the smallest doubt of pain/panick.

Also lets say 3 months into lengthening what was you thinking about like you must have had the same 10 things pop into your head.

"what are the folks at home gonna think"
"is this worth it"

Stuff like that. Obviously you had a rather easy road compared to alot of the other lengtheners*.

And you was already on good ground at home but generally i want to know what it was to be you at that moment. ty-.

It all happened very quickly.  I made the decision to have LL in a February, and by June my legs were broken and I was in fixators.  Both the doctors I visited (Mitkovic and Xia) had lots of recent experience with foreign LL patients so they didn't think it was a big deal.

The first few days of actual lengthening were easy and problem-free.  Nothing went wrong so I had no cause for concern.  I was just happy to be getting LL at that point.  They didn't make me stand for a while, and that was when I got my first taste of real LL pain.  It felt like I was standing on spikes, and I guess I kind of was.  It wasn't until the end that I started getting paranoid about every little thing, like having one fixator closer to the radiator than the other and the metal expanding unevenly.

The worst time to be me was the 2nd month of my LL when my knee problems were at their worst and nobody could do anything to help me except cortisone injections, which only offered temporary relief and weren't healthy for the knees.  That's when I was thinking that I'd made a terrible mistake and considered stopping lest my knees get any worse.  However, I knew they weren't going to refund my $25,000 so that was my only chance to get LL and I kept going anyway.

3 months into lengthening my knee problems were starting to get a little better, so I was more relieved than worried by then.  I wouldn't be a cripple.  I was mostly concerned about the lousy roommate situation at the hospital at that point.  I was stuck with either Mummy or KF, and neither of them was a good match for me.  I never had doubts about whether LL was worth it or not, nor did I worry about what people would think about LL at home.  Because of my then-untreated mental illness I'd lost my last friend a few years prior to getting LL, so I knew I'd be starting over with a whole new group of people who never knew I used to be 170cm.

Thanks for the questions.  If anyone has any more, please post them and I'll be glad to answer them.  Getting specific questions helps jog my memory about my LL experience 7 years ago.  If I just started writing about it, I don't know if I'd be even half as informative as I am when I'm answering questions.

[PrettyTall]

How much did it take from you life ? a year or more  ?

[Medium Drink Of Water]

3 weeks in Serbia (May 2007)
5 months in China (June 2007 - November 2007)
3 months of limping around with a walker/crutches (November 2007 - January 2008)
2 weeks in China again to get the internal nails removed (December 2008)

[alps]

Do you think it might become a problem as you grow older?
Especially the stiffness part?

[Medium Drink Of Water]

LL has been around for a long time.  There've been thousands of cases of CLL and probably hundreds of thousands of non-cosmetic cases since it was invented by Professor Ilizarov.  Nobody's reported major long-term problems as far as I know of, or one would think doctors would've have stopped doing it by now.

So I don't think my problems will get any worse than they are now.  However, if I do have problems in the future I'll definitely share them here, or at whatever LL forum exists by then.

[KiloKAHN]

Right now I am unable to do a lot of the physio exercises or walk because of the pain in both legs. The most I can do is stand for maybe 15 or 20 minutes at a time because of the soreness in the leg muscles. I know you said the thicker patients had a harder time lengthening in Beijing. What were the problems they faced from what you could tell? Was it just more pain during the lengthening? Did they seem to recover as well as the other patients once the lengthening was finished?

[Medium Drink Of Water]

Standing works wonders and is a great form of PT for LL patients.  As long as you can stand you're all right, so don't worry too much about the other exercises.  I was one of the lazy ones, just doing standing for my PT, and I eventually caught up to the more active patients.

Yes, pain was the main complaint from the big guys.  They had a lot more tissue to provide resistance, therefore they had more stretching and ripping going on.  Larger patients had more wires in Beijing, but it looks like Dr. Parihar is using those two big bolts in the front of your tibiae to deal with your larger size.  I have a small frame and got away with just the four wires.  Here's an excerpt of what Sober42Long had to say about having thick legs and getting LL:

I look back at my experience here at the hospital and the only thing I can tell you is the only thing I can honestly remember? Pain.  This entire process for me, the past 4 months is one giant blur of pain.  Although my stature is not very high, my body is very wide and stocky.  I had approximately 8% body fat and extremely toned body.  My calves were very large and well-developed from jogging 3-5 times a week.  I was actually given the largest frames the hospital has, which are generally given to dwarves.  (large frames are not necessarily good.  they are heavier and require more pins in your legs) Perhaps if my calves were more girly and were scrawnier I would have had significantly less pain.  My advice to those who wish to undergo this process is to UN-develop your lower legs.  Make them as girly and scrawny, soft and giggly as possible, and stretch them to be a gooey, pliable muscle and that will in my opinion prepare your legs to be stretched 3 inches.  Large, muscular and firm calves are not conducive to a pleasant LL experience because the muscle density is greater and generally tougher to stretch which will cause more pain. (Hence, another reason why women experience little or no pain, and can be stretched far more centimeters than men)

He got out okay in the end.

[Moubgf]

But that is what i don't get. I got exreme pain sensitivity like if i really knuckle hit my leg it hurts like bad bad. Where my face goes into the position of screaming without actually screaming. It wasnt like this before but i guess depression and inactivity does that to you. So maybe before surgery i should do some muy thai kicks or something to harder my pain sensitivity.

Also he said he got 4 months of pain? Well did he not have pain killers to take?.

Also my calves have gotten juicy from all my shoe lifts i have marched several miles with.

[crimsontide]

i had very large legs... so i have heavy frames and large bolts too..... my calves were enormous, very firm...   ii think ballerina was unavoidable for a guy like me...

this feels like my diary... i only do standing for pt too

[Medium Drink Of Water]

Also he said he got 4 months of pain? Well did he not have pain killers to take?.

Because of China's bad history with opium, their culture is very conservative about giving out opioid pain medications.  And some LL pain is so bad (especially from accidental sudden movements) that even medication can't stop it.

[IwannaBeTaller]

Medium, you mention that having longer tibias means having shorter strides, and that you have to take more steps than a natural 5'10 person. Do you also have to take more steps than when you were at your original height? Do you have to take more steps than a natural 5'7 person? 

[Medium Drink Of Water]

That's a really good question that took some walking around in front of a mirror to answer.  I think they're about the same as they were when I was 5'7 since the length of the stride is mostly determined by how far the femur goes forward.

[IwannaBeTaller]

Can you do LL if you have taken antidepressants in the past? Because they say on old forum  that you can't possibly underdo the surgery, because it screws up your brain chemistry and doctors will never do the surgery in that case.

[Medium Drink Of Water]

LL doesn't affect your brain at all.  You can do LL if you've taken antidepressants in the past, and even if you are currently on antidepressants.  I was on antidepressants the whole time I was doing LL.  Three other LL patients I've met in person but won't name out of respect for their privacy also had a history of taking antidepressants, and nothing bad happened to them either.

[tapemeasure]

This has probably been asked before, but what's the best way you can reduce the physical pain of LL?

[Medium Drink Of Water]

People with thick legs seem to have more pain in general from LL, so I'd advise people to let their legs get skinny in the months before the surgery if they want to spare themselves some misery.

If pain pills aren't enough of a relief, in China they had a medicine called wood lock.  It caused a burning sensation that would distract you from the pain caused by the lengthening.

[tapemeasure]

oh dear, i have pretty thick legs ok thanks for the answer!

[Sweden]

I can attest to the thing leg thing.

MDOW: Do you still have some minor stretch aches in your calfs or tendon in the mornings?

Could you easily stretch your calfs when you wake up(you know, pushing against a wall with one leg straight back. Entire foot on floor) without and discomfort?

Have you ever tried squats with heavy weights?(60-100kg or 200pound)

Did you ever had x-legs? How was it handled?

[Medium Drink Of Water]

I can attest to the thing leg thing.

MDOW: Do you still have some minor stretch aches in your calfs or tendon in the mornings?

Could you easily stretch your calfs when you wake up(you know, pushing against a wall with one leg straight back. Entire foot on floor) without and discomfort?

Have you ever tried squats with heavy weights?(60-100kg or 200pound)

Did you ever had x-legs? How was it handled?

At this point everything has settled down, and my legs feel the same in the mornings as they do in the evenings.  I can do the stretch you described without discomfort, and I often do yoga first thing in the morning.

I haven't tried doing squats, but I have a home weight machine that goes up to 200lbs. I can do a lot of reps on the leg press at the maximum weight.  I even did that back when I had my nails in without any problems.  I think I could go quite a bit higher if I went to a gym, since bearing weight with the legs has never been a problem.

I never had x-legs or bowed legs.  In Beijing the doctors regularly checked us for misalignment and corrected it by having us turn the knobs unevenly until the legs straightened out.  I'm skeptical of non-surgical treatments for bowing or x-ing.  Maybe building up the muscles can create an illusion of the leg being straighter, but if the bone is crooked then it's crooked.  I don't see how doing PT is going to change that when you've got an orthopedic nail holding it in place.

[IwannaBeTaller]

You often hear the advice "don't go over 10-15% of the original bone length" because you will get alot of trouble otherwise. Was this true for you? Did you lengthen under or over 15%, and if over, did your doctor warn you against it?

[Medium Drink Of Water]

I lengthened about 20% (15 inches to 18 inches).  Professor Xia measured my legs and told me 8cm was the most I should lengthen, and I did 7.5cm.

I didn't get any additional problems once I passed the 5cm mark like patients such as Sweden have reported, at least not while I was lengthening.  I got exertional compartment syndrome as a result of the new anatomy of my legs, which needed another surgery (fasciotomy) to fix.  I'm not sure I could've avoided that if I'd lengthened 15% or not though, since I don't have a twin who only did 15%.

The more I learn about LL, the more patients I talk to, the more I think of it as an individual thing that needs to be customized to fit the needs of each patient.  Some people can lengthen a lot without problems, some can't.  The best advice I can give to people is not to have a goal in the beginning - just stop lengthening when you start having problems since that's your body telling you it's had enough.

[IwannaBeTaller]

Thanks!

One more question...can you touch your toes while keeping your legs straight?

[Medium Drink Of Water]

Yes.  My flexibility came back surprisingly well.  It's better than it's ever been actually.  The fact that I started doing yoga helps a lot.

[Moubgf]

Yes.  My flexibility came back surprisingly well.  It's better than it's ever been actually.  The fact that I started doing yoga helps a lot.

Did you loose yourself during lengthening or did your morale and generall awarness stay as high. i Mean 17:39 at the clock with pain on your legs in a foreign country doing a surgery you don't know much about regarding complications.

I feel that i will have a hard time relaxing when i do the surgery.

[Medium Drink Of Water]

My morale and general awareness always stayed pretty high.  I think I can credit the Guang Ji Hospital social scene for that.  There were always ~20-25 foreign patients there who spoke English, plus the Chinese patients who knew the language.  Being able to look forward to going on rounds and visiting with friends every evening after dinner was hugely important for my mental well-being.

I was able to relax because I was basically a baby while I was there.  I was under the care of doctors, nurses, and caretakers the whole time and didn't have to do anything for myself.  I signed up for a program with proven results, and I fully bought into it mentally.  I was really worried about my knees in the beginning, but those problems ended up resolving themselves and the end was pretty smooth sailing.

[Moubgf]

My morale and general awareness always stayed pretty high.  I think I can credit the Guang Ji Hospital social scene for that.  There were always ~20-25 foreign patients there who spoke English, plus the Chinese patients who knew the language.  Being able to look forward to going on rounds and visiting with friends every evening after dinner was hugely important for my mental well-being.

I was able to relax because I was basically a baby while I was there.  I was under the care of doctors, nurses, and caretakers the whole time and didn't have to do anything for myself.  I signed up for a program with proven results, and I fully bought into it mentally.  I was really worried about my knees in the beginning, but those problems ended up resolving themselves and the end was pretty smooth sailing.

Thanks man. This give me great relief because i need the certainty that the pain im feeling is the right one.  And im being taken care of accordingly. I am normally a person who don't talk about my feelings or ask for help. I want to do it myself because i always am happy with the result or i can only blame myself. So the thought of being 0% in controll scares me.

Also a question. How did you socialize with the other patients there. Do you just roll into their room while you are in a wheelchair or what?. I think i will be "ashamed" of the procedure so i don't want others to know i went to great lengths to improve my height thinking im UBER insecure while i just want a little bit of height. Maybe im looking into this too much haha.

[Medium Drink Of Water]

That's pretty much it, just roll on into their hospital rooms and start a conversation.  You've got the "how are your legs" icebreaker to use on everyone there so it's easy to start chatting with people.  Then it moves into deeper conversation.  I revealed quite a lot about myself and got told a lot by others.  It's amazing how quickly strangers can open up when they have something in common.

[Wannabegiant]

That's pretty much it, just roll on into their hospital rooms and start a conversation.  You've got the "how are your legs" icebreaker to use on everyone there so it's easy to start chatting with people.  Then it moves into deeper conversation.  I revealed quite a lot about myself and got told a lot by others.  It's amazing how quickly strangers can open up when they have something in common.

Very good point, i also suspect that when people are vulnerable which they would be doing LL, they tend to be more open because they need the support and sharing the burden etc.

[IwannaBeTaller]

Kinda pointless question, but did the topic of LL ever come up at a medical examination with a doctor after the operation? Like when you were at the doctor for something totally different, and he just casually notices scars and you said "Oh yeah, I had surgery to lengthen my legs" or when you just told him. Did something like that ever happen?

[Medium Drink Of Water]

That happened to me a few weeks ago actually, and has happened before that as well.  I always just tell the truth since there's no reason to hide things like that from a doctor, due to confidentiality.  I like using the term "distraction osteogenesis" with them though.