Femur lengthening with Dr. Betz - 2021

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Thank you.  That relieves some anxiety.

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Fantastic progress @chasing_higher_dream, Dr B and Daniela hold you in high esteem btw! Good luck for the final few cms

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Great progress and walk mate, keep it up you are almost there!

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Quote from: chasing_higher_dream on August 11, 2021, 10:47:01 AM@ LU213: Thanks. I had so far a positive experience with Dr. Betz and his team and can recommend him.
I did not have the ITB released, Dr. Betz also prefers to not do so. In his opinion, there is no point in damaging a good tissue as it's not necessary since it can stretch with a good amount of PT (though it may take a little longer) and he has proven this through countless previous patients he has been operating on over the years.

In my experience, I have been religiously doing stretching for 2-3 hours every day, 7 days a week. And my ITB seems to have stretched pretty fine and I also do not have any wide legs anymore!

Yeah 2-3 hours everyday is the key here. With ITB released, my wide legs narrowed 30min of stretching a day, though I think how you stretch is just as important.

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@DonBones: Thanks for the good wishes. I am glad to hear this
How are you doing? I guess you had your surgery scheduled by end of June/July.

@RB: Thanks, mate.

@ SirStretchAlot: I am glad to know that you have managed to narrow your wide legs too! Yes you are right - the form, intensity, and duration of the stretch are also important.

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Hey @chasing_higher_dream!

Just finished reading the diary. Thats some crazy progress without any soft tissue releases, your work ethic and patience must be insane. When you say 2-3 hours stretching do you mean just the IT Band alone?

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Quote from: slender on August 14, 2021, 11:10:29 AMHey @chasing_higher_dream!

Just finished reading the diary. Thats some crazy progress without any soft tissue releases, your work ethic and patience must be insane. When you say 2-3 hours stretching do you mean just the IT Band alone?

@slender: Thanks. The 2-3 hours of stretching per day involves all of the muscle groups. It takes me roughly 45 mins to 1 hour to stretch all of my muscle groups. So, I do 2 to 3 sessions of this per day. One session in the morning as soon as I get up, one in the afternoon (I sometimes reduce the duration of this session in afternoon, since I am working fulltime), and one before I go to bed.

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76 days post-surgery --- 6 cm lengthened

Video of my walk at 6 cm: https://imgur.com/a/9J5MsR5

Function
Most of my function is still intact. Nothing has changed much. My muscles are now getting tighter especially my hip flexors and piriformis. I can feel it while I am stretching. The range of motion of the stretch involving my hip flexor muscle has reduced. Luckily, I do not have wide legs or duck ass as of now. Though I am suffering from a new problem, my pelvis has started to rotate towards the left. So when I stand straight my pelvis turns to the left by 10 to 15 degrees while my legs point straight. This has resulted in my walking gait not being so smooth as it can be. I am working with my physiotherapist to identify which muscle group is causing this pelvis tilt and possibly fix this issue (I go to professional physiotherapist once a week).

Clicking
The resistance to click is now further reduced and now it's a child's play to click. I am still clicking at 15 clicks per day (0.78 mm).

Pain
Overall pain is low. The ankle pain in the front side of the right leg stated in my previous post seems to be interlinked with the pelvis rotation problem. The rotated pelvis to left has resulted in bringing the right side of the pelvis little front, thereby bringing the weight of the body more to the front side of my right leg, thereby putting more pressure on the front side of my ankle. I hope that I find a solution to this problem. Also, I am still taking my pain killer medications.

Sleep
Sleep has further degraded. I feel the tightness of the muscles when I sleep, I roll around to relieve some of the tightness. Also, sometimes I wake up due to my tight muscles. I sleep on average for 5 hours now at night.

Misc
Overall, I think my condition is still good. It's astonishing to see how days are passing so slow. I am counting every day as it passes. I am waiting for the day when I am done with lengthening.
I was meeting my friends 2 days before in a restaurant, one of my female friends commented that I am looking thinner and good. She asked if I have loosened any weight. I just shrugged and said yes and tried to switch the topic. It seems like people around me have started to notice something's different about me

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Fantatic progress

1) I have the exact pelvis tilt. It's standard trendelenburg where your right gluteous muscles have atropied. Notice that sitting on hard surfaces will become increasingly hard for you because you've lost so much glute muscles. Glute training will put your gait back on track.

2) The tightness is coming from your clicking rate. I dropped to 10 clicks or 0.52mm starting from 5cm. I'm around 7.5cm right now and I still have no tightness. I understand you want it to end asap, but you should listen to your body.

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@chasing_higher_dream: Dude it only looks like you've bumped your hip or something. Not even close to breaking both your femurs... that PT is really paying off! I bet it feels amazing to have people notice all the money and hard work you've put into this.

@SirStretchAlot: I find it amazing that you can drop down to 0.5mm a day without worry of pre-consolidation. This should be stated as a PRO for the mechanical nails. Do you think that the tightness can be reduced with even more PT or is it just a cost of lengthening rate that we have to deal with?