Consult with Dr. Paley and overview of Paley Institute/St. Mary's Hospital

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Good stuff JBC.

Definitely wear the wedge for your leg discrepancy. I wear a 1cm wedge in my shoe for a discrepancy in my right leg, it makes all the difference for hip and low back pain. They aren't expensive (if they are, you are getting scammed), so I advise you get a wedge for each pair of shoes you own, so that you never go without if you forget to move the wedge. For sure put one in your running shoes and your lifting shoes if you lift weights. High stress activity is a killer for your hips and back without that correction.

They tend to be made of a smooth plastic material, so they like to move around in your shoe. I've used everything from velcro to Gorilla glue to get them to stay in place. If the shoe's insole is removable, put them under that insole so you are not standing directly on the wedge, otherwise they can cause pain in your heel. Depending on brand, they do wear out and will start to compress and give less than the correction they are supposed to, so keep that in mind and replace them when needed (every year or so)

"Lifts" and corrective insoles are not the same thing btw.

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just wanted to say thank you so much for the time it took to write this! this type of post is incredibly valuable and appreciated!

you may have said this in your post (or a previous one), sorry if i missed it - don't need to know your starting height, but did paley say the generally expected date of surgery to date of home timeframe? (i.e. 5cm in x months, 7 cm in y months, etc?).

thanks again!

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Sorry about the late replies, I've been dealing with a pretty brutal stomach flu .

CCMidwest, I'm shopping for wedges . I've never worn lifts, and Dr. Packer advised to just buy a Dr. Scholl's insert to start for price reasons (if they work, they are cheap, if they don't, you don't waste a lot of money). I tried that but it keeps slipping around inside my shoe. Once I find a good wedge, I have super glue . Thanks for your advice.

Polycrates, I was specifically told "femur short". Not sure about the conjecture on the board around femur length - I can see why, however - the femur is generally the longest bone in the body. Maybe Dr. Packer meant proportion ratio-wise. I do really have somewhat unusually long tibias .

(As an aside to that), I find the patient experience diaries incredibly useful but I've learned to discard a lot of information disseminated here, such as the "how do I do athletically after CLL." The forum is kind of all over the place on this. Contrast that to the answers I got from Dr. Packer and Dr. Paley. Their answers  and data points, and taking aging into consideration, were logical and made perfect sense. It's been my experience that doctors generally know medical stuff much better than the Internet , so I use this mode of thinking with regards to pretty much everything medically related.

ll3ll, you can go home after you stop lengthening. The time frame I was given is 1mm/day in general, depending on how fast or slow you consolidate. The big advantage with the Precise is complete rate control and precision, which is, tbh, weighing heavily on me in comparing other options, but keeping an open mind until I meet with Dr. Guichet. Dr. Paley will not begin lengthening until several days after your procedure, up to a week, depending on how you recover, so take that into consideration as well.

From private messages: someone asked about scarring, which I forgot to mention. I did ask about this, and saw both pictures as well as scars on an actual CLL patient. The nail insert scars are minimal. they look like very tiny crosses or knots, about 2-3 mm diameter overall. Dr. Packer told me that they either completely fade away, or folks use creams to make them disappear. She also said that a Miami-based plastic surgeon who is very good and, according to her, incredibly expensive, developed stickers (really, she said stickers), that people put on their skin and these things are supposed to be wicked good at making scars disappear.

The one scar that is definitely noticeable is the IT band release scar. It is about 3 cm or so in length and is close to your knee, on the outside of your leg. You'll get this depending on how much you lengthen. That is also supposed to fade, but apparently a bit will still show, even with the cream. Maybe the stickers will work for that . If not, you can opt for laser treatment to make it disappear, I suppose. I don't think it would bother me.

I'll be off forums for a while as I'm traveling. I hope this answers your questions. I have committed to posting a similar accounting for my visit with Dr. Guichet and will. I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford consults with these excellent doctors, so I feel this is something that I can give back to others considering this procedure.

I have decided that I'm 100% going through with this. Unicorn's latest diary entries and the email from the patient I met during the visit with Dr. Paley convinced me, as well as a comment from a friend of mine considering another cosmetic procedure, albeit one that is not this extensive. Despite the enormous commitment, Dr. Paley's patient is so happy from doing this, and doesn't regret it for a second. The comment made by my friend is "I just want what I never got", and this makes 100% sense to me. I think we all desire these things to some extent, and it's socially acceptable and medically/scientifically possible to change your natural body dimensions, starting with something as simple as dental braces going all the way to extensive procedures such as CLL.

Last - I am now very uncertain on whether I'll keep a diary. This is a very personal decision, and the diary hijacks of several patients have made me really reticent about doing this. It is very upsetting to see people that go through such an incredible ordeal and give back to the community be questioned or castigated based on the doctor they choose, the choices they make, etc. I also realize that there are literally thousands of people having this procedure and the diaries posted here represent an incredibly small sample set of the CLL population, so I'm not sure I want to pollute general opinion of this procedure, in a positive or negative manner, with such a small sample set of data. I will keep detailed notes, and if I decide to post a patient diary, I will be fully transparent about my experience, while jealously guarding my privacy. I will stop posting the minute my diary gets hijacked by someone such as LLuser1, for instance, and ask that my diary be taken down.

Best,

--jbc

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I won't hijack your diary I promise
I'm not a bad guy, only concerned about some people taking bad decisions according to what I've seen.
Paley is the best of the best. You'll be ok. Go ahead and good luck

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Good luck with your journey!