Posted on May 14, 2023, 10:50 pm
#1
Hi everyone,
So I did four segment lengthening in š©stanbul with Live Life Taller between May and September of 2022. 5 cm tibias May-July and 7 cm femur July-September, both surgeries were LON method, to hit goal of 180 cm. I was gullible and fell for their social media and thought to hell with it Iāll take the risk. I didnāt have $200,000 for surgery stateside so I just went for it.
Halil the butcher always mentions his attorney or āadvocateā as they are called in š©stanbul to threaten patients who speak out, but theyāre so fking stupid they donāt understand how defamation/libel/slander law works in the United States, where if your statements can be proven factual with hard evidence itās perfectly legal to speak your mind. I have medical records from Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles documenting the corrective surgeries Iāve needed so Iām not afraid of saying any of this.
Thereās been plenty of discussion on this forum about the out of control rates of infection at LLT, ranging from minor infections to severe osteomyelitis, I actually remember being in the elevator at their ārehabilitation centerā last summer with the Japanese kid who almost needed amputation back home in Japan (https://twitter.com/height_llt) after dealing with severe infection from LLT, and luckily I never got a single infection while there because I didnāt follow their bullš© wound care regimen.
In order to conserve company resources they tell LON patients not to shower until after fixator removal and their ānursesā come like once a week to change the gauze on the fixators. Any western surgeon will tell you this is completely insane. The gauze should be changed every day and you should shower every day. I spent my own money to stock up on gauze using the Turkish delivery app Yemeksepeti and showered every day and changed my own bandages, carpet bombed the pin sites with iodine, etc and just let the medical team do their thing once a week even though I didnāt need it.Ā
Where things went south for me, and something Iām not sure has been mentioned on this forum before (maybe, could be wrong) is Halil the butcher is so incompetent that with tibia patients he removes the syndesmotic screws at the ankle during the fixator removal surgery, which creates a tibiofibular subluxation, a type of dislocation that needs to be surgically repaired or will result in the patient being unable to walk/permanently disabled long term. I found this out after sending X-rays from LLT to Dr. Michael Assayag in Baltimore over WhatsApp. He spotted it within 30 seconds of looking at the X-rays and said itās a ātrademark complicationā from Turkish limb lengthening surgeons.Ā
I left š©stanbul early after the diagnosis from Dr. Assayag and a close family member passing away suddenly. I finished lengthening at home and had the corrections staged across two surgeries so I could weight bear on one leg while recovering and avoid being wheelchair bound. My first corrective surgery was in October and the second was five weeks ago in April. The tibia surgery also created a valgus deformity in the right leg which needed to be straightened out using a new internal nail and plating, and while I was in š©stanbul Sedat lied to me about it. I pointed out that my right tibia was starting to look crooked, and he said it was ānormalā and from āthe pressure created by the fixatorā.
I honestly feel lucky, it could have been so much worse. I never lengthened more than .75 mm per day on the tibias or 1 mm per day on the femurs, even with the physical therapists pressuring me to lengthen at a faster rate āto prevent early consolidationā which is actually very rare. Itās so disgusting how they pressure people to lengthen 1.5 mm per day or even faster in some cases.
While I was in the hospital in October I did a group call over WhatsApp with Sedat and Halil and told the butcher what a piece ofĀ Ā he is. I asked him why LLT is the only fking place on Earth that lengthens 1.5 mm per day, asked him why heās not invited to present at orthopedic conferences his technique of lengthening faster if itās so great, sounds great if you can shorten patients time in fixator, right? I donāt think anyone has ever talked to him the way I did, I could tell he was furious. He said he did āeverything perfectā and I asked him what caused the ankle subluxations and valgus deformity then? Did I cause it? Was it magical faeries? Garden gnomes? I told him he couldnāt even work as a janitor in an American hospital, that his medical license would be set on fire if he performed surgery like that in the States. He was so fking pissed off he blocked me on WhatsApp.
I told Sedat that itās so obvious that heās just lying about everything, I mean I was literally talking to them while laying in a hospital bed in the #1 rated hospital in California for orthopedic surgery, #2 in the entire United States, Iāve got medical imaging and a proper diagnosis from two of the top board certified American orthopedic surgeons showing the obvious malpractice from Halil (Dr. Marecek at Cedars is an amazing trauma surgeon if anyone here needs to get fixed up) and heās just gaslighting saying they did everything perfect. How fking stupid do you think I am man? I mean other than going to š©stanbul, obviously that was stupid asĀ , but do you really expect me to believe all of this is wrong, my ankles were fine, my leg wasnāt crooked, up is down and the sky is red not blue, like just shut the fk up you sociopath.
As an American, Iām no fan of the USA. Mass shootings, opiate addiction from greedy drug companies, this country is far from perfect. But itās at least reassuring that a shop of horrors like LLT could never, ever exist in California. It would just immediately get shut down by the government. Halil would be barred from practicing medicine for life and would end up working as a literal butcher slicing taco meat as a street vendor on San Vicente boulevard. A place that fked up simply could not exist here, and for that at least I am thankful.
You could maybe, m a y b e forgive the very low level staff at LLT, the physical therapists and āmedical teamā for not understanding what exactly they are complicit in, I mean theyāre just kids in their early 20s who grew up in a developing country with out of control inflation and no real future, making the equivalent of $4 per hour giving pointless massages to patients with infections and deformities like anything theyāre doing fking matters, who have no exposure to the standards and rigor of western medical institutions, but the same can not be said for Sedat. He and his brother actually grew up in Germany, so he actually knows how legit, reputable medical practices are supposed to operate.
If youāre reading this and thinking about going there for surgery, please for the love of god just go somewhere else. LLT keeps raising their prices so itās not even really going to be an affordable option for long, youāre better off just going to Parihar in India if youāre budget conscious, at least then youāll know youāre in safe, capable hands.
Turkey is the Land of Lies. This kind of surgery is just too dangerous and extreme to risk in a rat hole like that.
Luckily my left ankle feels great now and my right ankle is coming along nicely since corrective surgery in April, consolidation is fine in weight bearing segments (had to take calcium + vitamin D for a while once I was back in LA to speed things up) so I should be walking normally in a few months and can finally move on with my life and new height. Iām so thankful I didnāt get any of the serious complications other LLT patients have. I feel so bad for them.
My username says it all. Donāt go to Turkey.
One of the initial X-rays from September after leaving š©stanbul showing premature removal of syndesmotic screws and tibiofibular subluxation:
https://ibb.co/1Qczs6z
Left ankle subluxation correction by replacing syndesmotic fixation:
https://ibb.co/jJZTp5f
Right ankle subluxation correction and valgus correction using syndesmotic fixation, new internal nail and plating (sorry posted wrong link first time):
https://ibb.co/b1WHT3Z
Scars:
https://ibb.co/VSBWLzg
https://ibb.co/3svktwm
https://ibb.co/RBWG33L
https://ibb.co/QmxzC5d
So I did four segment lengthening in š©stanbul with Live Life Taller between May and September of 2022. 5 cm tibias May-July and 7 cm femur July-September, both surgeries were LON method, to hit goal of 180 cm. I was gullible and fell for their social media and thought to hell with it Iāll take the risk. I didnāt have $200,000 for surgery stateside so I just went for it.
Halil the butcher always mentions his attorney or āadvocateā as they are called in š©stanbul to threaten patients who speak out, but theyāre so fking stupid they donāt understand how defamation/libel/slander law works in the United States, where if your statements can be proven factual with hard evidence itās perfectly legal to speak your mind. I have medical records from Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles documenting the corrective surgeries Iāve needed so Iām not afraid of saying any of this.
Thereās been plenty of discussion on this forum about the out of control rates of infection at LLT, ranging from minor infections to severe osteomyelitis, I actually remember being in the elevator at their ārehabilitation centerā last summer with the Japanese kid who almost needed amputation back home in Japan (https://twitter.com/height_llt) after dealing with severe infection from LLT, and luckily I never got a single infection while there because I didnāt follow their bullš© wound care regimen.
In order to conserve company resources they tell LON patients not to shower until after fixator removal and their ānursesā come like once a week to change the gauze on the fixators. Any western surgeon will tell you this is completely insane. The gauze should be changed every day and you should shower every day. I spent my own money to stock up on gauze using the Turkish delivery app Yemeksepeti and showered every day and changed my own bandages, carpet bombed the pin sites with iodine, etc and just let the medical team do their thing once a week even though I didnāt need it.Ā
Where things went south for me, and something Iām not sure has been mentioned on this forum before (maybe, could be wrong) is Halil the butcher is so incompetent that with tibia patients he removes the syndesmotic screws at the ankle during the fixator removal surgery, which creates a tibiofibular subluxation, a type of dislocation that needs to be surgically repaired or will result in the patient being unable to walk/permanently disabled long term. I found this out after sending X-rays from LLT to Dr. Michael Assayag in Baltimore over WhatsApp. He spotted it within 30 seconds of looking at the X-rays and said itās a ātrademark complicationā from Turkish limb lengthening surgeons.Ā
I left š©stanbul early after the diagnosis from Dr. Assayag and a close family member passing away suddenly. I finished lengthening at home and had the corrections staged across two surgeries so I could weight bear on one leg while recovering and avoid being wheelchair bound. My first corrective surgery was in October and the second was five weeks ago in April. The tibia surgery also created a valgus deformity in the right leg which needed to be straightened out using a new internal nail and plating, and while I was in š©stanbul Sedat lied to me about it. I pointed out that my right tibia was starting to look crooked, and he said it was ānormalā and from āthe pressure created by the fixatorā.
I honestly feel lucky, it could have been so much worse. I never lengthened more than .75 mm per day on the tibias or 1 mm per day on the femurs, even with the physical therapists pressuring me to lengthen at a faster rate āto prevent early consolidationā which is actually very rare. Itās so disgusting how they pressure people to lengthen 1.5 mm per day or even faster in some cases.
While I was in the hospital in October I did a group call over WhatsApp with Sedat and Halil and told the butcher what a piece ofĀ Ā he is. I asked him why LLT is the only fking place on Earth that lengthens 1.5 mm per day, asked him why heās not invited to present at orthopedic conferences his technique of lengthening faster if itās so great, sounds great if you can shorten patients time in fixator, right? I donāt think anyone has ever talked to him the way I did, I could tell he was furious. He said he did āeverything perfectā and I asked him what caused the ankle subluxations and valgus deformity then? Did I cause it? Was it magical faeries? Garden gnomes? I told him he couldnāt even work as a janitor in an American hospital, that his medical license would be set on fire if he performed surgery like that in the States. He was so fking pissed off he blocked me on WhatsApp.
I told Sedat that itās so obvious that heās just lying about everything, I mean I was literally talking to them while laying in a hospital bed in the #1 rated hospital in California for orthopedic surgery, #2 in the entire United States, Iāve got medical imaging and a proper diagnosis from two of the top board certified American orthopedic surgeons showing the obvious malpractice from Halil (Dr. Marecek at Cedars is an amazing trauma surgeon if anyone here needs to get fixed up) and heās just gaslighting saying they did everything perfect. How fking stupid do you think I am man? I mean other than going to š©stanbul, obviously that was stupid asĀ , but do you really expect me to believe all of this is wrong, my ankles were fine, my leg wasnāt crooked, up is down and the sky is red not blue, like just shut the fk up you sociopath.
As an American, Iām no fan of the USA. Mass shootings, opiate addiction from greedy drug companies, this country is far from perfect. But itās at least reassuring that a shop of horrors like LLT could never, ever exist in California. It would just immediately get shut down by the government. Halil would be barred from practicing medicine for life and would end up working as a literal butcher slicing taco meat as a street vendor on San Vicente boulevard. A place that fked up simply could not exist here, and for that at least I am thankful.
You could maybe, m a y b e forgive the very low level staff at LLT, the physical therapists and āmedical teamā for not understanding what exactly they are complicit in, I mean theyāre just kids in their early 20s who grew up in a developing country with out of control inflation and no real future, making the equivalent of $4 per hour giving pointless massages to patients with infections and deformities like anything theyāre doing fking matters, who have no exposure to the standards and rigor of western medical institutions, but the same can not be said for Sedat. He and his brother actually grew up in Germany, so he actually knows how legit, reputable medical practices are supposed to operate.
If youāre reading this and thinking about going there for surgery, please for the love of god just go somewhere else. LLT keeps raising their prices so itās not even really going to be an affordable option for long, youāre better off just going to Parihar in India if youāre budget conscious, at least then youāll know youāre in safe, capable hands.
Turkey is the Land of Lies. This kind of surgery is just too dangerous and extreme to risk in a rat hole like that.
Luckily my left ankle feels great now and my right ankle is coming along nicely since corrective surgery in April, consolidation is fine in weight bearing segments (had to take calcium + vitamin D for a while once I was back in LA to speed things up) so I should be walking normally in a few months and can finally move on with my life and new height. Iām so thankful I didnāt get any of the serious complications other LLT patients have. I feel so bad for them.
My username says it all. Donāt go to Turkey.
One of the initial X-rays from September after leaving š©stanbul showing premature removal of syndesmotic screws and tibiofibular subluxation:
https://ibb.co/1Qczs6z
Left ankle subluxation correction by replacing syndesmotic fixation:
https://ibb.co/jJZTp5f
Right ankle subluxation correction and valgus correction using syndesmotic fixation, new internal nail and plating (sorry posted wrong link first time):
https://ibb.co/b1WHT3Z
Scars:
https://ibb.co/VSBWLzg
https://ibb.co/3svktwm
https://ibb.co/RBWG33L
https://ibb.co/QmxzC5d
