The dinner yesterday was;
- Cream of mushroom soup
- Meatballs and brown rice
- Chocolate mousse
And the breakfast this morning was the typical Meditterranean breakfast. Cucumber, tomatoes, black olives, feta cheese, yellow cheese (beyaz peynir & kasar peyniri) and honey.
I couldn't sleep a lot yesterday night, as I claimed I would, but I don't feel tired either. It's probably because I drifted off for brief periods of sleep, which were interrupted almost every hour by the nurses or maids coming in to change bed sheets, change the wraps on my legs, put plastic bags filled with ice on my knees, and administer new painkillers to my vein when requested. I actually have a button in my bed, when I press it, the machine sends a painkilling solution from the tube connected to my vein (overdose isn't possible, the machine is preset to administer a certain maximum dose). Istanbul Cerrahi is really a first class hospital. The caretaking here is amazing. I have five nurses taking care of me at different hours.
The assistant doctor came in half an hour ago and checked my legs. I can raise them and bend my knees. Homework number one - I should do these every hour as an exercise. However, just as I predicted before surgery, I have a "good leg" and a "bad leg". My left leg is perfect -literally without any pain- and exercising it is a walk in the park. On the other hand, my right leg (which had worse flexibility and a bit less muscle mass before surgery) hurts like hell. It's okay when I keep it straight, but my knee hurts when I try to bend it. I can bend my knee, it just takes tremendous effort. I can raise both legs easily though.
Fitbone Femur Lengthening in Istanbul - Dr. Muharrem Inan
I'm glad they're treating you well Chris, that place sounds like a grade A hospital. I could go for some of that gourmet food you're having. 
Do you think the correlation between your right leg's flexibility and mass and increased pain is significant? I'm always curious how important pre-OP muscle training is.
Sounds like a good place to be in and credit to you also for your pre-surgery preparation, this always helps.
Keep it up!!!
Tx
Quote from: BilateralDamage on January 07, 2014, 07:58:27 AMI'm glad they're treating you well Chris, that place sounds like a grade A hospital. I could go for some of that gourmet food you're having.
Do you think the correlation between your right leg's flexibility and mass and increased pain is significant? I'm always curious how important pre-OP muscle training is.
The nurses are hot too 
Close to my age, yet quite experienced.. I was surprised that they were so young. Everyone is so nice in the hospital, from the nurses to the doctors to the "uncle" who brings in tea everyday. (In Turkey we call middle aged/old men "uncle" and young men "brother/bro", it's a very common thing.. lol).
My guess would be that the correlation between pre-op training (flexibility and muscle mass) and pain is low. When I asked Dr. Inan why my right leg hurt while my left leg didn't, he gave an honest answer and said that it's a common thing that happens, that every bilateral patient has a "better leg". They started operating on my right leg first, so when they started working on my left leg, they already knew the medical obstacles they would face there.
The current pain level is around 4/10. Very manageable, very tolerable. But as Rtaller states on his diary on the other website, the pain (or let's say "nuisance") is constantly there. So you need to keep your mind off it and focus on other things, in other words distract yourself from the nagging feeling.
Dr. Guichet places great importance on pre-op muscle training. From what I've seen, Dr. Paley doesn't regard it as necessary as Guichet. Maybe if Leechlet asked whether this was a consequence of a required preparation for different nails (a ratcheting nail vs. a magnetic nail), it could be a very good question.
From what I recall, Dr. Guichet didn't want to do an IT band/Fascia lata release, whereas for Dr. Paley and Dr. Inan, this is a routine practice and is done when necessary during the surgery.
Quote from: krin0610 on January 07, 2014, 08:02:03 AMSounds like a good place to be in and credit to you also for your pre-surgery preparation, this always helps.
Keep it up!!!
Tx
Thanks, and cheers!
Chris
P.S: Olivetree, sorry that I couldn't reply to you on our discussion about Breaking Bad. It was the night before the surgery and I was a bit nervous. Best wishes.
Good news: Second-day Post-Op, the catheter is out. I felt very nervous when it was going to be taken out, but it only took a second. It hurt a lot more when they took out the "drainages" (is this the right word?), a.k.a tubes that were connected to my knees which collected excess blood to prevent my knees from getting swollen.
I'm using a white plastic pitcher called "the duck" when I need to pee. It's not very difficult. All I have to do is STOP thinking about everything else, and dream about the Niagara Falls, and the sound of water.. And then peeing becomes easy. It's all in the mind.
DAY 3
- Instead of having a typical sleep regimen of, say, 8 hours within a fixed frame of time, I drift off to sleep and then come back in the weirdest hours. I sleep for half an hour maybe during the day, then I wake up. An interesting fact, however, is that I never feel tired at all. I'm almost always energetic and it feels good.
- My biggest problem at the moment is the pain in my right leg, and the way I keep coughing. I literally cough all the time. It begun a month before surgery and it still isn't over yet - it's a dry, repetitive, useless cough, and it keeps coming back. Initially it didn't bother me at all, it even echoed a certain charisma as I felt like a wounded Russian soldier in the Battle of Stalingrad, we're back in the 1940's in the Eastern Front of World War II, I have the urge to tell the nurses to hurry up with the treatmet so I can join my comrades back in the war. So мужественный and великолепный. No drama whatsoever. You know the characters always keep coughing in classical Russian novels. The Eastern Front is HARDCORE. Where's my flask of hot каша?
- Ahm.. Anyway. I feel a bit of a pain in my spleen, have no idea why but when I cough it feels like my spleen will explode. I contemplated why I have this pain, asked some people around, they said "Maybe you have some gas?", but it doesn't sound cool enough, so I'm dismissing that probability.
- The assistant doctor visited this morning with a team of six or seven. He introduced me to the lengthening device, whom I now call Huseyin ("Hussein").
Meet Hussein, fellas. Wittenstein sent him all the way from Germany and he'll be lengthening my bones. Sweeet. A former engineer in Germany, he suffered from frictional unemployment and turned himself into an electronic device. 
Now my man here has two buttons. "DOCTOR" is a testing button as far as I've understood, and "PATIENT" gives you the real deal - it lengthens the bone by sending signals through a transmitter.
The white part is placed on the skin... 
...where the good doctor has marked during surgery.
What'd you think it was, a tattoo of the Anarchy symbol I got when I was drunk?
WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT.
(And the bottom fifth percentile when it comes to height).
- So, how does Hussein exactly work? When you press the "PATIENT" button, the small screen starts counting.. 1..2..3..4..and so on. You have to wait until it comes to 9, and then remove it. Each number is the activation of a mechanical step within the system of the nail. Lengthening is done 3 times daily on each leg. So you'll have to count to 9 for six times daily. Have to be somewhat qualified in math.
- You place a stethoscope next to the transmitter/receptor so you can hear a click, or some other sound, maybe a quack or a moo, who knows for God's sake I haven't used it yet. But it's useful in telling you the device has done the lengthening successfully.
- Let's now talk about toilet issues. *YOU MAY LEAVE NOW THINGS WILL GET DIRTY*. Um.. Actually, they won't.. I managed to take a dump on my 3rd day post-op. Two nurses lifted me to the wheelchair and I went to the bathroom. The wheelchair is a real display of genius in design. It's higher than the toilet and has a huge bottom in the middle of the seat, so you just need someone to roll it above the toilet, and you can guess the rest...
This funny thing here is called "the duck". It doesn't really look like a duck, but when it turns yellow, it actually does. Can you guess what it's used for?
Bandages & Daily Exercise, bending the knees
And the world is waiting outside...
ChrisIsaak
Excellent update ChrisIsaak. I hope I can get a wheelchair like yours after surgery after my visa is approved. Going #2 is one of the things I'm not looking forward to after surgery. The Fitbone looks neat too. It's almost like you're part machine with it in you. 
A hole in the wheelchair, who'da thunk it!! Thanks for the update Chris.
DAY 4
Good News and Bad News: Today you'll hear about the dark side of LL. Good for you, bad for me
- The epidural tube was taken out this morning. Initially I was quite glad by finally getting rid of the uncomfortable feeling on my back, especially when I tried to sleep. Imagine trying to sleep with a pencil taped to your back. The bandages covering the epidural had started to come off after three days of sweat. When the nurse took the tube off, I was relieved. Now being able to move a lot freely in the bed, I cleaned myself with wet towels. Since I can't take showers at the moment, this should keep me clean for a while. I also keep changing t-shirts everyday. Make sure to have large t-shirts with you before LL. If you wear medium size, get large, or XL t-shirts. You must be able to wear them easily with all the tubes connected to your hands, back, chest, etc.
- However, after my newfound freedom in terms of mobility, I had to give up the positive aspects of the epidural, which is painkilling. My right leg constantly had a 5/10 pain today, and during a brief "trial training" session with my experienced physiotherapist, I had cramps twice (Pain 9/10). I howled from pain and kept cursing. I'm keeping my right leg covered up with many plastic bags filled with ice, it really offers an anti inflammory, analgesic relief. We have used three painkillers so far, Parol, Oksamen, and Contramal. Contramal (Tramadol) is the strongest among the three, it puts me to sleep within half an hour and makes me see weird dreams. It's not Percocet or Vicodin strong though. I believe Americans are luckier when it comes to acquiring drugs that have more strength. Europe has just too many regulations.
- If I could substitute my right leg with another good-ole-painless-left-leg, I'd be able to sleep sideways, or face down. This is for certain. I managed to stay on my face down for a while, but the stinging pain on my right leg made me uncomfortable so I switched to lying down on my back again.
- A detail I forgot to write about is that all rooms appear to be single in this hospital. The hospital bed is amazing, you can adjust the height of the part of the bed holding your upper body, you can also seperately adjust the height of your lower body (legs), and lower or raise the bed in general (which makes it easier for wheelchair transfers). So there are 3 seperate controls on the bed.
- I'm watching Hollywood superhero movies for motivation (Yesterday's film was Captain America, today I watched Thor, chosen based on my particular fondness of Scandinavian mythology). I kept laughing at how superheroes are always portrayed by tall guys (I'm not jealous, haha) and how Captain America had this "We need a small guy at heart, but we need to make yer tall and buffed for the upcoming scenes son" attitude. Because short men can't face Nazi zombies 
- I'd appreciate it if LL vets could give an insight about how (or when) this terrrrible pain on my right leg will pass. How was your post-op pain, and did it get any better, or did it actually get worse once you started lengthening? I might have forgotten to write this down before, but the doctor had told me that they had to release the Fascia Lata/IT Band on my right leg during surgery to ensure flexibility, but they didn't do it for my left leg since it was already sufficiently flexible. It feels like a muscle-straining pain rather than a broken-bone pain, anyway.
Quote from: Kilokahn on January 09, 2014, 03:00:57 AMExcellent update ChrisIsaak. I hope I can get a wheelchair like yours after surgery after my visa is approved. Going #2 is one of the things I'm not looking forward to after surgery. The Fitbone looks neat too. It's almost like you're part machine with it in you.
Hey Kilokahn,
I'll be getting two wheelchairs. One with a hole in the middle (same as in the pic) for going to the bathroom, and another, regular wheelchair.. since I can't meet friends on a chair with a hole in the middle at the hotel's lobby/bar, hahaha..
The Fitbone is neat. I have a "positive perception" against things made in Germany and in the US. Especially cars and tech stuff. I hope lengthening won't hurt much.
Quote from: BilateralDamage on January 09, 2014, 03:09:49 AMA hole in the wheelchair, who'da thunk it!! Thanks for the update Chris.
No probs
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