My lengthening journey with Dr Hoondong Lee

Hi everybody, I decided to start a dairy of my journey of lengthening. It's such an extraordinary experience that I feel would be worthwhile to make notes. I have benefitted so much from reading other veteran's dairies, I feel that it's also my time to contributes and share.

I had my surgery on May 26th with Dr Lee at the Severance Hospital. Due to financial reasons, I chose the LON method instead of internal. The surgery itself was painless. I did spinal anesthesia with sedation. The night of the surgery was not as bad as I imagined. Dr Lee came and told me that the surgery was successful. I was in the hospital for five days. They taught me exercises and how to dress my pins, gave me necessary medications, and discharged me.

I have been lengthening at the apartment I rented close to the Severance Hospital for more than two weeks now. Let me just say my lengthening process turned out completely out of my expectation. I was told to lengthen 1mm per day for two weeks before I take my first post op X-ray. From the very first day, my lengthening has been excruciating. I am naturally a very flexible person. To prepare for this surgery, I have been doing Yoga and various stretching exercises for a year. Even Dr Lee said that he felt my soft tissues are very soft during the surgery, that I should be fine lengthening to 7cm. But no, I had muscle pain, skin pain, nerve pain, tendons pain the first two weeks. Yesterday I went and got my first X-ray, and according to the X-ray, even though I was turning at 1mm rate, due to pin bent, I only lengthened 7mm! According to Dr Lee, I might be one of those super unfortunate person who experience excruciating pain from beginning to the end. OMG!

Hey Classical!
Thanks for sharing your LL experience.
I presume that you are lengthening your tibias since you have stated LON and the excruciating pain you are experiencing is maybe due to lengthening 1mm per day.
Many doctors and LL veterans usually advice tibial lengthening around 0.66-.075mm per day unless you risk premature consolidation.
Anyways it will be great if you post your pre-op height.
All the best

Thanks for starting this patient experience.  It's been informative so far.  I'm glad we've got a patient of Dr. Lee's here telling us what it's like to get LL with him.

Is he giving you any medications for the pain?

@TheRisingShorty: Thank you for your advice! My starting height is 150cm. At this point, since the pain is so bad, I am happy to lengthen just 5cm, maybe even less. Yes, I do agree with you that 1mm could be the reason why I am experiencing so much pain. I asked Dr Lee to slow me down to 0.75mm/day.

@Medium Drink of Water: Thank you for the encouraging words! I am reading your dairy, and am loving every minute of it! Yes, Dr Lee prescribes three kinds of pain meds. Tramadol for weaker pain med, Targin for stronger pain med, and Lyrica for nerve pain. I was trying to avoid taking Targin and Lyrica because of the side effect. However, my nerve pain is driving me crazy, I am back on Lyrica. I was reading many of the dairies from Beijing, seems like Tramadol is the main pain med patients are taking with good results. However, it seems that Tramadol doesn't do much for me.

Hello Classical!  Thank you for sharing your adventure and I wish you the best!  Feel free to post pics!

Absolutely! I will ask Dr Lee for my X-ray and post it here.

Main while, I started to stand per the doctors request. Dr Lee said that walking is not very important, however, standing is. Yesterday was my first day of standing. It felt like a thousand needles going through my feet and shin. Today was definitely better

are you male or a female

Dont mean to sound rude but can you tell us about one of the most important aspects in CLL, the price. We all know Dr Lee's prices has gone through the roof since he moved to the new hospital. Simply unaffordable now, actually I think unaffordable is an understatement, its a rip off now. Add to that the internal Precise dilemmas he's had with two previous patients and you can see why there hasnt been any more Dr Lee diaries lately, that is again only my opinion so its a subjective thing.

I pretty much put pen on paper that I would do my first LL with Dr Lee, that was until he raised his prices exponentially. So could you please outline your cost for the surgery itself, the apartment you are at and how did you find it, do they help you look for an apartment? I heard looking for an apartment in South Korea is quite hard. And everything else in between.
Thanks for the diary, been looking forward to some more Dr Lee diaries but for obvious reasons there hasnt been anymore since his price hike. Seems to cost more than Dr Paley, Guichet and co now

Good luck, Classical! Sorry about all the pain you are in. Are you in touch with other patients of Dr Lee that you can hang out with so you are not lonely over there at least?