Quote from: Jim_dabarber on June 18, 2018, 02:56:12 PMI have way more scars on tibia because of the IM nail screws. If you are worried about scars i would do pure external on tibias but ofcourse for me they arent that bad. They have been fading away with time. Immediately after frame removal i hated them but now they arent as noticeable to me. The scars on femur are worse as they are indented but are easily covered by my clothes and even boxers. Im sure you can get the scars removed but that would be really expensive. Probably more expensive than the LL surgery itself lol. I never asked Dr kulesh as scars wasnt what i was worried about.
I took some photos so you could see for yourself.
https://imgur.com/gallery/vmyKDrD
Scars on the tibia don't look noticeable to me. But on the femur, they look bigger I heard that Dr kulesh offers scar removal surgery
Cross lengthening in st petersburg russia
Quote from: California on June 05, 2018, 02:35:58 PMI have been following your comments because I will go to St. Petersburg in September. Any tips or comments about the AirBNB process? Not real comfortable about ponying up a month's (or 3 months) rent in advance.
Im not really sure about how its going to go with the Airbnb that Pope and I got together. He dealt with that part you can ask him. Im arriving on the 28th and meeting up with the owner and everything seems legit. Ive never had a problem with Airbnb in the states but in Russia ive never tried it. Hopefully it goes smoothly as well.
Quote from: Tiger9898 on June 18, 2018, 03:01:07 PMScars on the tibia don't look noticeable to me. But on the femur, they look bigger. Have you talked about scar removal surgery with Dr Kulesh? Can they be treated with that surery? I heard that he also offers scar removal surgery
They arent as noticeable but i do have way more and are hard to hide with shorts. I havent talked to Dr kulesh about them but i will before the next surgery. I just havent been worried about the scars as most of them will be re-opened when i get the IM nails removed in a year. Ill be sure to bring it up when i see him again to have an idea on the cost and if he offers that procedure and i will be sure to post it on here.
Quote from: Muller25 on June 17, 2018, 12:31:15 AMDo you know what the price is? And how are you guys getting your visas
The price for visa was around $500 for a 3 year visa. Pope and i used the same online visa support. They offer invitation letter and will even fill out the whole process for you for additional cost. Its really easy. http://www.russia-travel.com/visa-services/russian-visa/
Quote from: Jim_dabarber on June 18, 2018, 03:06:44 PMThey arent as noticeable but i do have way more and are hard to hide with shorts. I havent talked to Dr kulesh about them but i will before the next surgery. I just havent been worried about the scars as most of them will be re-opened when i get the IM nails removed in a year. Ill be sure to bring it up when i see him again to have an idea on the cost and if he offers that procedure and i will be sure to post it on here.
Okay, I don't think that scar revision surgery is more expensive than LL and especially in russia with dr kulesh, it shouldn't be so expensive. I will also ask him when I visit russia
2nd Step of Cross Lengthening
Arrival
I booked my flight and arrived to Russia on June 28. As soon as i landed i went straight to Beeline. Forget about getting around Russia without internet. Email is all the doctors use and then WhatsApp and of course the mighty Uber! I got in contact with the AirBnb landlord that Pope and i had booked and headed to the place. The flight had really drained me out so i decided to take a nap. Worst idea. Slept through the whole rest of the day. Realized i wasn’t going to have time to go exchange my money and go to the consultation so i sent Dr Kulesh an email apologizing and thankfully he said i could go the next day. I then went to a hotel that Pope recommended (refer to his diary for info) to do my registration as AirBnb doesn’t do that for you and i would need that for the bank in order to exchange the money. They told me i wouldnt be able to pick it up until 1pm the next day. I went home rested till the next morning.
I woke up the next day really early as i had to exchange the money. I called to see if i could pick up the registration early and nobody would pick up. I took my chances and arrived around 12pm and thankfully it was. It took me about 2-3 hours to finally find a place that would exchange the $6000 that i had into rubles. Every bank i tried would have a limit of $300-$500. Eventually a bank teller was nice enough to tell me id have better luck looking for an exchange center instead of a bank and of course they were right. Btw they didnt even ask for my registration. I was in and out in 10 minutes and i even got a better exchange rate than the banks so if you guys are trying to exchange money i would recommend an exchange center instead of a bank. I headed to Mcdonalds and then i was off to the consultation. The visiting hours at St Elizabeth during the summer are something like 5pm-7pm really stupid so trying to get in was nearly impossible. The security knew no english and didn’t even want to communicate through the translating app. I couldn’t get a hold of Dr Kulesh so i asked Pope if he could tell him i was in the lobby trying to get in. Took a while but finally i see Dr Kulesh walking towards me and man was i glad to see him. We tried going in and of course security guard would still not let me in even with him. Dr Kulesh had to sneak me in through another building and we walked for about 10 minutes going up and down stairs. Something that just 4 months post op was actually doable for me thank god! Even Dr Kulesh was impressed. He kept looking back to see if i was still behind him. We finally get to the consult room and literally in 5 minutes we were done. Explained what was going to be done. 5cm LATN on femur and 4cm LATN on tibia. Pope had a different setup than me on the femur and i asked to keep my old setup as it worked perfectly for me hence my quick recovery. Consultation was done and i headed to the famous Popes room. I brought him Mcdonalds and greeted him. One crazy dude! Bilateral external femurs. Man i cant imagine how hard that must be. Talked for about 30 minutes and i headed back to my apartment as i was to be at Medem by 7am for surgery.
Surgery Day
June 30th. Arrived at Medem clinic at 7am and waited in the lobby till my appointment at 7:30am. I was taken to my room and asked to undress and put on a gown. Tests were done and i was ready for surgery. Even though i had already done this once i was honestly still nervous. Having to go through this once is hard enough but to put yourself through it twice is just madness. I was given general anesthesia and i was out.
Nightmare
Woke up to extreme pain! Asked for painkiller and it quickly went down but had to vomit a couple times. Moved me into my own room. 3 days later i realized why i was in so much pain. My femur setup was nothing like last time. In fact i had 2 clamps gripping onto my broken femur.
X-RAYs
https://imgur.com/gallery/QerBMFy
I was devastated and immediately asked for explanations. Dr Kulesh explained that the method was changed as the clamps make nail insertion for LATN much easier as theres nothing penetrating through the bone so the nail can just slide in. Makes sense but man were these clamps hurting. I wasn’t able to stand up until the 5th day as opposed to the 3rd day of my 1st step but i was confident i could get through this.
July 5th -13th
These days weren’t easy for me at all. The pain had started to come down on the 6th but then i started lengthening on the 7th and pain shot right back up. I was doing 1.25mm on tibia and 1.50mm on the femur. I had 2 re-bandages in between these days. First 1 by Dr Kulesh and the next by the doctor here at the hospital. Not a good experience. First he rushed through my re-bandages and then after he back up into my femur leg that btw can only bend about 35 degrees so its always pretty much straight. Cursed at him real good and got him to calm down and be more careful. It worked! He apologized and took me back to my room.
July 14th - 29th
Days were just the same. Dr Kulesh would be out of town until July 30th so i was basically left under the care of the hospital staff. I would lengthen stretch eat and i would save the sleeping for the night. I was actually getting a good 6 hours of sleep every night thanks to my lucky Zzzquil that i brought from home. Highly recommend it! I would wake up about 2-3 times at night in pain but stretching would help and if it didn’t i would ask for painkiller and i would fall back asleep. Second X-rays we’re taken on July 17.
X-RAYs
https://imgur.com/gallery/3gwPBxc
I was starting to get nerve pain on the tibia after i started lengthening the tibia 1.50mm. Luckily i had some Gabapentin that i brought from home and it helped. I started running out so i asked to see the neurologist so i could get more medicine. Took about 2 days and he came in and prescribed me Lyrica. 150mg twice a day once at night and one in the morning. The pain on my femur was getting really bad. Id say about 5-10 constant pain and 8-10 pain at night. I got about 3 hours of sleep two nights in a row and finally i asked to see the doctor here. It took about 4 different doctors all telling me that everything was normal but if it was normal why am i in so much pain? Compared to the first step i had previously done i felt like i was being tortured 24/7. Finally another came in and i explained to him my pain and that the painkillers were not working anymore. The next day before re-bandaging he came in with a Fentanyl patch. A few hours later the pain was gone. Amazing! I felt so relieved. The next 3 days were so easy. Slept for hours and i did get nauseous a few times but asked for medicine and felt better right away. Sadly after the third day they took the patch off and i was back on regular pain relievers. Although the pain was much less now for some reason. Staying in Russia i felt like i would be better off staying close to my doctor as opposed to last time that i went home. This time i felt abandoned. Dr Kulesh was gone and i was left alone with doctors who hadn’t even operated on me. Ended up regretting not flying back home.
July 30th - Aug 9th
Dr Kulesh was finally back and i felt so much better knowing someone who actually operated on me would be able to tell me that everything is going good. He confirmed it July 31st when he came and looked at me and took the 3rd set of x-rays.
X-RAYs
https://imgur.com/gallery/QFqQVQk
At this point im at 35mm on the tibia and 35mm on the femur. Almost there. I had the hexapods put on Aug 5th and started corrections in hopes of getting these frames off Aug 10th. Unfortunately because my initial payment was late the surgery had to be moved to Aug 17th. Mu wife tried sending Dr Kulesh the money through Western Union and it got rejected. She tried a wire transfer and it got rejected also because the VO code was not right. Dr Kulesh gave me another VO code and my wife tried again but the wire transfer would take 3 days to get through and if it got rejected i would miss my cut off date so i asked my wife to leave the wire transfer but send the initial payment straight to me through western union. Theres no way that could go wrong right? Wrong! Aug 6th gets here and I’m supposed to be getting transferred to St Elizabeth so i pack all my stuff and ask Dr Nikita if we can stop by Western Union to pick up the money. So here i go in a wheel-bed and two guys pushing me into Western Union. Funniest situation ever! So I’m there for about 2 hours trying to get my money and finally the lady tells me that my money has been sent back and I’ve been blocked from receiving money. She didn’t know why and told me to call Western Union and they might be able to tell me. I call them and they say they have no idea either to go to the store and they might be able to help me so i gave up. I just had to sit there and hope that the wire transfer would go through. I was taken back to Medem and finally on Aug 8 in the morning it went through but it was late. Now i just have to wait till next week for surgery. I took long films with correction hexapods.
X-RAYs
https://imgur.com/gallery/cmUx5rw
So far so good. I am lengthening 1mm per day at the moment as i have to over lengthen for loss of mm during nailing and i still had a couple mms left to be completely straight. As of now i don’t have pain during day and i have only been asking for painkiller at night to sleep and taking the Lyrica as well.
Great update Jim!
Thank you for updating it, those clamps look insanely painfull, arent those giving lots of scars?
Goodluck!
Arch
Great update man!
Those claps wtf? I have never seen those before. I really feel that Dr Kulesh wasnt too confident about inserting half pins so later the nailing could be difficult. Maybe that why its better to go with Solomin.
Quote from: Arch on August 09, 2018, 10:38:41 AMGreat update Jim!
Thank you for updating it, those clamps look insanely painfull, arent those giving lots of scars?
Goodluck!
Arch
Extremely painful! I hate them. When i try and work on my ROM i can feel my quad rubbing on the front clamp 🤢
Hopefully Dr Kulesh does a good job of stitching me up after because right now the openings look terrible.
Clamp Gashes
https://imgur.com/gallery/dmTwRSA
Quote from: doomsday on August 09, 2018, 01:08:36 PMGreat update man!
Those claps wtf? I have never seen those before. I really feel that Dr Kulesh wasnt too confident about inserting half pins so later the nailing could be difficult. Maybe that why its better to go with Solomin.
First time I've seen them also. Not too happy about them. Actually Dr Solomin was the one who insisted on these. Something new hes trying out i guess and i happen to be the first with 2. Android was lucky to only get 1.
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