Posted on Dec 12, 2016, 10:33 pm
#1
Hello everyone
It's finally time for my own LL experience and this is going to be a diary about my journey to become taller.
About me
I'm male and my current height is 161cm.
My leg-to-height ratio is 0.48 which means that I'm short and leggy to begin with.
My goal is to become 169cm which will increase my leg-to-height to 0.50.
For esthetical reasons, I'll make sure to never exceed this ratio.
I'm a graduate studend who doesn't want to wait for LL until his best years are over.
So, for budget reasons, I will do externals (LON) only and look for a cheap, but yet reliable place to have my surgery done.
I want to do quadrilateral lengthening, but it's hard to find good doctors who would do it.
New Delhi and the ISIC - first impressions
A cheap, but yet reliable place seems to be the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC) of New Delhi.
It's a reputable government-funded hospital and they only employ doctors who can do their jobs well.
Their core speciality is spinal services, but they can do all kinds of orthopaedics like fracture fixation (nailing and plating).
They know how to lenghten legs, because they do it for people who have lost a few centimeters due to accidents.
Generally, the don't like to do cosmetic surgeries, because from a medical point of view, those people are healthy.
But they will do cosmetic leg lenghtenig if you come up with a good reason like in my case: daily discrimination due to short stature.
Their philosophy is to restore hope in a life worth living.
To this date, they have done cosmetic leg lenghtening only twice (and Tolly of this forum was indeed one of them).
But they have had many more people coming for consultation.
The main orthopaedic surgeon for leg lenghtening is Dr. Deepak Raina. He works as a team with Dr. Surbhit Rastogi who is specialized in pediatric orthopaedics and trauma. But I haven't met Dr. Deepak yet, though. I only met Dr. Surbhit today, because Dr. Deepak has gone on leave till thurstady.
I received an email from the ISIC, informing me that my long-awaited appointment for today got canceled, when I literally had just checked in to my flight to India
(many emotions).So I quickly replied to them that I was already on my way to India and asked for another doctor. It took me weeks to finally get an appointment from the hospital, but this time, they were very responsive and offered me an appointment with Dr. Surbhit Rastogi. I was relieved.
I hadn't been to India before and when I left the I.G.I. Airport, seeing New Delhi was quite a shock to me:
The sky is always grey and sometimes even brown. The air stinks terribly. The soil is littered, The traffic is what I considder mayhem. It's also very loud, there are little to no sidewalks or ways to safely cross a street. And when you have walked for ten minutes, you probably saw five guys urinating against walls and bushes. And all those skinny stray dogs everywhere - poor things
The people are mostly nice to foreigners though, but some pickpocket had opened my backpack when I was unsing the subway.
Nothing stolen though, because I keep everything hidden and difficult to reach or leave it in my hotel.
This is the surrounding you're getting into, if you opt for a surgery in New Delhi - be warned!
In contrast to it, the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre is in a somewhat more quiet and save area.
The Hospital itself is clean and organized. The staff was very friendly and allways helpful to me, even when I had to ask for directions twice.
If you are new to the ISIC, you will have to register first in the OPD (even with an appointment). In order to do so, you will have to follow the sign that says "Orthopaedics" and then you will have to turn to the counter that has something like OPD payments written on it. I can't remember the exact words, but this is basicly what you have to look for. There is no sign or hint at all, that you can also register. So this info might be a little helpful, if any one of you every wanted to go there
Appart from that, everything is like I already said: organized. Once you have made it through the quite simple registration process, you will have to pay for "Registration" (150 INR) and "First Consultaion" (900 INR). You will be given a folder for all the future documents, a "Patient Identification Card" and a deteiled cash receipt. Then they will tell you a room number (1 to 5) and you just go there and give your ID card to whoever is standing in front of it. The you will have to wait some time until the call you by name. I arrived in time for my appointment and had to wait for just about 10 minutes.Dr. Surbhit Rastogi was very friendly and open to me. His English is very good, but I'm not a nativ speaker, so maybe you could think otherwise.
He explained the hole LL process, the possible complicantions and prognosis to me and he told me about their two former LL patients and even offered me to meet one of them.
What I'm not so happy about: He told me that he considders quadrilateral as too dangerous and Dr. Deepak will probably think the same way about it
Furthermore, Dr. Surbhit thinks that only LATN is possible, because they don't use or have any long nails. This would double the costs because of two surgeries. And I would definitely have to come back to India for a second time to get my nails in. Locking the LON-nails is something my doctor at home could do as well, but inserting the nails at home is too pricy. According to Tolly (who is a proven former patient) both LON and LATN were possble.
So in the end Dr. Surbhit offered me to come back on friday when Dr. Deepak has returned from his vacation. It will be a second "first consultation" free of charge and we will talk about things like LON again and plan my surgery together. I wouldn't have minded paying 900 INR again since it's "just" ~12.56 Euros, but it was a very kind gesture
In a nutshell: I dind't get what I want (for now), New Delhi stinks and everything is taking longer then I had anticipaded.
The ISIC and Dr. Surbit seem highly trustworthy and gave me an overall good first inmpression. Looking forward to finally meet Dr. Deepak.
Here is a picture of the ISIC's lobby that I took:
I will write more on Friday, wish me luck regarding LON, beacuse LATN only would interfere with my plans.
Until then, I will use the time to find another cheap and reliable doctor who could do LON, just in case...
