Internal Femurs w/ Dr. Rozbruch May 2025

Hello all, I will be having my LL procedure with Dr. Rozbruch in the coming week. Thought it would be a good idea to share my experience to help out, as so many others have helped me with their experiences. This procedure has been something I have thought about for most of my life and finally decided to pull the trigger. I met with Dr. Rozbruch & his team back in January and I feel confident I made the right decision.

I am in my early 30s and decently fit. Starting height is <5.5.

I will try my best to keep this updated as best I can throughout the whole process.

Happy to answer any questions and wishing the best for everyone in a similar position.

Good luck.. you will do well

Hey everyone,
Was hoping to post earlier but the past few weeks have been hectic to say the least. Surgery went well thankfully—Dr. Rozbruch and his team did an excellent job and have been really supportive throughout the process.

Surprisingly, the first two weeks post-op were actually some of the easiest. Pain was manageable, and I was sleeping well every night. Each day I felt like I was progressing and healing well.

Things took a turn around week 3. Once I hit about 13mm, I started getting significant knee pain and more generalized leg pain. I’ve also had occasional sciatica before surgery (usually flaring up if I sit for long periods), and that started acting up again during week 3. Weeks 3–5 were rough—pretty constant pain throughout the day, and nights were the worst. I was only getting maybe 2–4 hours of sleep most nights, and mentally that was draining.

Thankfully, the last few days have been a bit better. I’m cautiously optimistic things are turning the corner. I go in this week for my second checkup—should be right around 30mm by then.
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Looking for Tips:
1.   Night pain / sleeping help – Anything that helped you manage night-time discomfort or get better sleep would be appreciated.
2.   Stretching & PT – I’m in a location where it’s hard to find physical therapists who really understand LL. For those who did this with Paley, what kind of exercises did your PT have you do daily?
        I’ve seen some people mention stretching for 6+ hours a day, but not much detail on what exactly they were doing. If anyone can share their routine or structure, that would be super helpful.
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What’s Helped Me So Far:
•   Voltaren Gel (knee pain): Absolute lifesaver. My knees would feel like someone stuck a knife in them at night—this helped ease that significantly.
•   Seated Elliptical: I use this several times a day, especially before stretching or lengthening. Helps warm things up and reduce stiffness a bit.
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Really appreciate all the info and support on this forum. If anyone’s going through a similar point in their distraction phase, would love to hear how you’re managing.

Thanks all and good luck to everyone on their journey.

How's it going? I finished my LL already but I like reading new stories and your journal is really detailed and interesting.

I'm not sure how to help with pain. I used opioids for night pain but I guess that's not the best advice to give. But I remember reading somewhere that pain is reduced if you sleep with your legs raised.

Thanks for the advice — yeah, I try to elevate my leg sometimes and it helps a bit, but nights are still rough. I really wish I could use some opioids just at night, but here in NY it’s extremely difficult to get pain meds prescribed. I only had enough for about the first week and a half, and that was it.

Thankfully, I’ve been doing better overall. I saw Dr. R again last week and he said everything is looking great. He prescribed Gabapentin for my sciatic pain, and it seems to be helping. Daytime pain is much more manageable now — nights are still not the best, but I guess that comes with the territory. We also decided to slow down the lengthening a bit to see if that would help. Dr. R usually aims for 0.8mm per day, but now I’m alternating between 0.8 and 0.6mm per day.

I’ve started feeling some tightness again, but I’ve been pushing my stretching harder each day, and that seems to be helping — the tightness now feels no worse than it did in the beginning. Like many others, I did a lot of stretching beforehand, so I’m hoping it pays off!

I’m almost at the halfway mark — should hit 40mm around Monday.

Hope your LL journey went well. Any tips for the second half of the journey?

Oh that sucks about the painkillers. I held off painkillers most of the first half but was mad with pain by the end, I guess I was lucky I didn't do it in ny. But I did the traditional ilizarov ex fix so maybe it's just more painful.

My best advice for the second half is to be resilient. Even though you may feel like giving up, just be strong and continue. Because even though it may seem very painful in the moment, you will regret later if you stop early. Oh and also make sure you continue stretching a lot. That's also very important as femurs are attached to many tendons.

Thanks — yeah, this is definitely a mental game. Even though I’ve been preparing for this since high school, actually going through it is a whole different ballgame. I’m doing my best to stay mentally strong throughout the process.

I’ve been sticking pretty closely to my stretching schedule. Not sure if it’s the “best” routine, but I stretch at least four times a day for about 30–60 minutes each session, usually before I do my lengthening. Dr. R also recommended a few at-home PTs who are more familiar with limb lengthening, and I’ve been working with them about once a week. It’s been helpful, but pretty pricey out of pocket — so I’m planning to switch to a local clinic where I can go a few times a week instead. It might be a bit tough getting there on my own, but I’ll give it the ol’ college try.

I am also thinking to have limb lengthening with dr Rozbruch, I had surgery with him before but it was for medical reason  and he was the best  , I also live in NYC and my problem also not finding many PT familiar with this surgery , if you found PT familiar with the surgery please share , wish you all the luck .

Just wanted to give a quick update, I just hit 67mm today. Honestly feeling great. I thought this would be the point where things start to tighten up, but I feel just as flexible now as I did in the beginning. Sleep is good, pain is basically nonexistent, and overall I feel better each week. Since around 30–40mm it’s been steady improvement. I see Dr. R next week, so fingers crossed everything looks good. After that it looks like I’ve got about two more weeks left in the distraction phase.

Thanks Sarah, I agree you can’t go wrong with Dr.Rozbruch, he really is one of the best. On the PT side, I’ve actually found a few good PT guys around here, plus one who does video calls that’s been really helpful. Happy to pass along his info if you’d like. That said, I think I overdid it in the beginning worrying about PT and stretching. I know this might be a little controversial since a lot of people here push nonstop stretching/PT every day, and I’m definitely not saying not to make stretching a top priority each day during this process. But in my experience, doing Dr. R’s exercises (mixed with a few extras) 3–4 times a day is more than enough if you’re consistent. That’s all I do now, and I’ve stopped going to in-person PT sessions since it’s just too much hassle to wheel myself over.

Hope to have more good news to share and as always feel free to ask me anything.


Wish everyone all the best

Just wanted to give another quick update as I just got back from seeing Dr.R today.

Thankfully everything looked good today and I’m right on track. I was a bit worried that maybe I stopped lengthening as the last few weeks have been super easy but luckily all is ok. Dr.R actually said that my new bone is forming so good that I can now start fully weight-bearing unassisted and walk with the walker fully. That was a huge surprise to me as I haven’t heard about doing that much before being fully done lengthening. He said if I keep up this pace, he can see me walking without a walker come end of Sep.

He did notice my right quad was tighter than my left. This has been something I have noticed since the week of surgery. It’s not super tight like I had expected it to be by now but it’s something I will be focusing on in my stretching sessions now that I will be walking soon. 


I have exactly 14 days left before 80mm, so fingers crossed everything goes perfect in the home stretch. 




Just to add on the fully weight-bearing. I’m pretty light, I went into surgery at only 135lbs and now have to be a bit lighter as I’ve lost a lot of leg muscle. I have the 50lbs per leg nails. The bone I have now around the nails helps support the nails enough to make it to 75lbs per leg now.