have just arrived in serbia, should meet mitkovic today.
starting height: 164.5
goal: 170
but i will have to see if i have a short enough tibia to pull off that gain, so i await my x-rays.
nope none at all.
had consultation with dr mitkovic, he did a basic measurment of tibia and femur, apparently i have
tib 33cm
femur 43cm
i was really surprised actually, since i have short legs, but we will get a proper scan tomorow.
he said his recomendation is 4cm, but you can do 5cm, he said 80% of patiens can do 5 safely, and 20% should stop at 4cm, he basically implied to not go over 5cm, i was a little dissapointed by this but my safety is paramount.
He said if you get misalignment say at 4.5cm due to soft tissue you must stop at 4.5cm, for discretesuser it was different, he got misalignment due to pre consolidation, so he could continue lengthening.
so we agreed to be positive and aim for 5cm, at least my proportions will be great both in wingspan and tib/femur ratio, but i may end up 169 post op.
the important thing is my health first, then accepting my height and move on with this issue i have, rather than trying to obtain some sort of good height like 173 or whatever from LL.
he says for consolidatoin i can get x ray every 8 weeks in the UK, that will maek thing much easier for me, he is happy to write an official letter in english for the UK.
he said cleaning pin sites is easy job to do yourself.
interestingly enough he never measured my height or anything, i guess it's immaterial to LL as your starting height has nothing to do with the process.
a words up on mitkovic and the hospital manager, pretty sure these guys are 5 8.5, so you may be taller than them if you meet that at 5 10, actually youd be even taller given the male average in serbia is higher than UK, just be prepared.
for pain level he said 90% of patiens don't use painkillers after surgery, don't know if that's good or not.
in case your wondering why mitkovic did one leg at a time for discreteuser that was because he was develeping a cold so he had to stop after the first leg, its not he was trying some new better way to do it.
upon removal of device at home, he said first you remove device and keep pins in , then walk for 1 week, then you remove pins then send device back, he said there is pain when you remove pin.
while lengthening you turn 4 surfaces a day, example
8 am
10am
12am
2pm
then nothing until next day, each surface is 0.15mm, so that's a total for 0.66
all taxis use dinars here, so you exchange euros for dinars in a local shop away from hotel, the shop says on it manjacima, i would suggest doing this before operation so you can pay all taxi fares for 3 month period.
also the x ray gets done once a month while lenthening, i thought it was weekly, price on that may be about 100 euro a time, but it will be in dinars.
i am to bring passport tomorow morning at 8:30 for my blood test/ phyc test and proper x ray scan, they need id for myself, my hotel has kinda taken my passport as is, my last meal is to be 7pm tonight due to the blood test.
he said during lengthenig beer is aloud, but only 1 per day.
overall i am happy i went with mitkovic rather than barinov, although with barinov using ilazarov i know you can do 6.5cm, maybe with mitkovic i can only do 4.5.cm but it's unknown, i prefer light weight bar and removal of device at home.
i would alway binrg notebook and pen with you to these meetings, very helpful.
taxi to hospital is 200 dinars so you will need that, for retun that is 400 dinars. so x that by 12 to 4800 to get back and forth weekly for cleaning of pin sites.
for x ray it is done elsewhere, i don't know where, but mitkovic will tell me, maybe it's not far, i don't know, that will cost taxi money as well, you go on your own but mitkovic will sms you the details to tell them what you need.
i think hotel accepts euros and dinars for staying.
you stay in the hospital for 6 days, maybe the hotel can keep some of your stuff in the room without you paying the rent, i don't know.
yes i was very relieved, my max goal is 6, id be happy with 5.
yes i was surprised to hear him say that, the other patients here said mitkovic said to them that they can go for 5cm, and if 5cm went well do 6cm maximum.
for some reason he said much less during consoltation for me but i don't know why.
i would be happy with 5cm anyway, we will see how it goes.
discreteuser is very helpful for me in this process, he show me all th exercises and without him i would not be here, likely i would be in russia with barinov as i thought that mitkovic retired this whole time.
yeah it is saturday morning.
i recomend when they book you in for blood test and phyc test and xray, for that day you are to come in , bring your cards and money as they may ask you to pay for the operation on that day, its important to bring the money in then as you will get a better date for operation if you book then, so remeber that.
also bring a belt with a screwdriver as there is a good exercise that discreteuser has that needs those tools.
it is funny about the gain, as the patients say they had people do 8cm before, but when you ask mitkovic or his nurses they all say 5 max, maybe they are trying to be safe or keep my expectations within safety
his name is pronounced ‘meet-koh-veech’ and i would say he is about the UK/US equivelant of a 168 male given that people are taller here,,apparently, so he is not a good but not bad height, not that that matters, but some people may feel silly for getting LL when the surgeon is shorter than themselves.
everyone is serbia is taller as male average is maent to be 182, so i have shrunk 5cm in perspective, aparently, but im not sure it is true as i have seen a few men my height in a typical walk, which implies i cant be 5 3 as 5 3 would be super rare.
dr. mitkovic doesn't care how tall you are, he never even measured me, but the hotel staff know why you are here, so in case of discreteuser people were saying 'no why you are so tall anyway', so to let you know ewf you will get some bad feedback from hotel people so be prepared.
Apparently only about 5% of patients go home for consolidation, this is not because of safety or anything, it is more because they cannot go back and be seen by friends/family with questions about mobility, but discreteuser told me he recommend I go home if my parents know because there is no reason to stay.
lol well if he really was 6 2 hed be super super tall, like being 6 7 over here.
yeah it is akward i can imagine, as i said in your diary both my local doctors who i told about this were 168.5cm, i know because i was in 4cm lifts to see them, i would say mitkovic was in the same category of height of 'a bit on the short side' but not truly short like me.
i don't think he cares, he never said one thing about my height, i don't know about discreteuser given he was 181, i will ask him if mitkovic reacted to his height with questions.
but the phyciatrist is not good at accessing the impact of my height at all.
he said thigs like ' i dont see a prolem with your height, tom cruise is short'
i told him he wasn't 5 5, that he was 5 7, and id be his height after surgery, i then went on to tell him that the president of france is 5 5 but lives inside 4cm lifts all day which are unwalkable for more than 1 hour.
he said al pachino is short, i think hes 168 which again much taller, but he said ' he seems huge because of his personality', but its like a guy who is 170 (i guess that is phyciatritist height) cant understand what its like to be me at 165.
anyway i tried to explain that if i was 5cm taller i could walk into a room of 30 men and 8 guys would be my height, it would be normal, i would accept that height, and i wouldn't be 'short statured male'. but if i wanted to be in a room with 3 men my current height it would have to be a huge venue of maybe 200 men or something, and people judge you in small groups of people.
i also said i don't know anyone personally who is my height, but i know alot of people that are 4cm taller than me, and the diffrence is huge because they are not truly 'short'.
but yeah KiloKAHN you and i are in similar boat of starting height, so we understand each other in a sense.
visited mitkovic today, he can do 0.66 or 1.00 depending on the qaulity of my bone, and he will let me know, he said once i reach 5cm i must go down to 0.66 anyway.
i told him i am aiming for 5.5.cm, he said okay.
i see your goal height is 10, okay you wont be able to do that with mitkovic device, it would probably be 7cm max, its not like ilazarov which can probably do 9cm, so i would check that with mitkovic first.
actually he says the recomended lengthening is 5cm tibia and 4cm femur.
i think what he is saying is, he doesn't want you to go above 5cm, but you do it at your own risk and he will try to help you reach your goal.
DiscreteUser says 6cm should be the maximum anyone should do on this device, i guess he means tibs but i don't know femur.
i dont know about femur with mitkovic device, i thought femur external is really bad and you should only do internal, but maybe mitkovics device isn't so bad for external femur because it is a monorail but i dont know.
mitkovic does do femurs, it has been said that the surgery pain is way worse then tibia but after that it is much the same thereafter.
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