Verticalpush thanks for your call and helping words sometime back man. I need to talk to you about something important. Please give me a call when you can or let me know when I can call you, my number is in your pm. thanks
Hey VerticalPush! How are things comin along? Any updates?
Hi everyone! I'm long overdue for an update. I visited Dr. D. for my final follow up just over a week ago. There was a chance my bones had pre-consolidated and Dr. D. would need to perform surgery. I found out prior to that day that my health insurance would NOT cover that procedure. Fortunately, the procedure was unnecessary as the nail was still able to lengthen. He had me lengthen my left femur another 2mm, and now my legs are equal in length.
I started at about 5'9 and ended just over 6'. I've been checking my height obsessively throughout the day. I'm convinced I squeezed everything I could out of the nail. Had I not had the last few follow-ups, and trusted the readings on the ERC machine, I would have only lengthened by about 6cm on my left femur. At that point, the machine "read" 7.5cm on my left femur. If I didn't know better, I'd have assumed that I reached the limit of the nail. Obviously that number was incorrect - my nail did not lengthen as much as it should have. Dr. D. had me reset the machine and we lengthened almost 2cm additionally on the left femur. While I was at it, I lengthened another 5mm on the right femur, so I did reach (close to) the full 8cm on both left and right femurs.
I'll post updated pics and x-rays from my visit soon, but wanted to give everyone an update that everything is going great!
That's interesting to know .. that the machine was reset and lengthening process started again...
Verticalpush ... was the ERC machine not accurate in lengthening?
Also ... glad to see you completed your journey.... I congratulate you ... my friend... 
Quote from: verticalpush on September 30, 2019, 07:31:18 PMHi everyone! I'm long overdue for an update. I visited Dr. D. for my final follow up just over a week ago. There was a chance my bones had pre-consolidated and Dr. D. would need to perform surgery. I found out prior to that day that my health insurance would NOT cover that procedure. Fortunately, the procedure was unnecessary as the nail was still able to lengthen. He had me lengthen my left femur another 2mm, and now my legs are equal in length.
I started at about 5'9 and ended just over 6'. I've been checking my height obsessively throughout the day. I'm convinced I squeezed everything I could out of the nail. Had I not had the last few follow-ups, and trusted the readings on the ERC machine, I would have only lengthened by about 6cm on my left femur. At that point, the machine "read" 7.5cm on my left femur. If I didn't know better, I'd have assumed that I reached the limit of the nail. Obviously that number was incorrect - my nail did not lengthen as much as it should have. Dr. D. had me reset the machine and we lengthened almost 2cm additionally on the left femur. While I was at it, I lengthened another 5mm on the right femur, so I did reach (close to) the full 8cm on both left and right femurs.
I'll post updated pics and x-rays from my visit soon, but wanted to give everyone an update that everything is going great!
Amazing news - congrats!
@VerticalPush - glad you checked back in, I was wondering what had happened! Looks like you're well on your way to achieving your goal!!
Keep us updated on how consolidation progresses!
Quote from: PANDA:BEAR.. on September 30, 2019, 08:16:45 PMThat's interesting to know .. that the machine was reset and lengthening process started again...
Quote from: PANDA:BEAR.. on September 30, 2019, 08:26:31 PMVerticalpush ... was the ERC machine not accurate in lengthening?
Also ... glad to see you completed your journey.... I congratulate you ... my friend...
Hi Panda. Yes! It was a very unexpected result. I don't think I read that anyone else experienced this issue and I don't really have a theory why it was the case for me. The ERC machine reading was WAY off. If the ERC machine was to be believed, I lengthened the left femur by 7.5 CM + another 1.9 CM after resetting the machine roughly 2 weeks after stopping at what I thought was 7.5 CM. That would total 9.4 CM. Of course, the nail limit is 8 CM so there's no way that is even close to correct. There is a setting you can choose where the machine will shut off if it isn't close enough to the magnet in the nail. We had that setting off, so one possibility is that I wasn't holding the machine close enough on the left femur. The other theory is that as you might recall I had lots of small muscle spasms on the left femur when I was lengthening - I didn't feel that on the right femur. Maybe my muscles were so tense that they only allowed a small amount of growth each day? Again, no medical basis for these theories, but I'd love to know what happened. The lesson in this is to make sure if you lengthen at home that you get your measurements taken (via x-rays at your surgeon's office) when you think you've reached your goal height. You might be surprised like I was!
Quote from: SimonFuller on October 01, 2019, 07:30:05 AMAmazing news - congrats!
Thanks SimonFuller! It feels WONDERFUL to reach the goal!
Quote from: JsElysianEagle on October 01, 2019, 07:50:50 PM@VerticalPush - glad you checked back in, I was wondering what had happened! Looks like you're well on your way to achieving your goal!!
Keep us updated on how consolidation progresses!
Thank you JsElysianEagle! I will keep everyone updated from time to time on how the consolidation process is going. As of today, I'm walking MUCH better. It still takes a few steps if I've been sitting for a while before my gait is somewhat normal, but if I walk slow enough you wouldn't really detect there I had surgery. This should improve every week.
Hi VerticalPush
Hope all is well.
Can you post a picture of the Synergy bone regeneration supplement or PM the picture. I tried google it but it came up as Pure Synergy.
Thanks
Quote from: verticalpush on September 10, 2019, 06:27:00 AMHello from Las Vegas everyone! I have quite an update today.
It's officially been two weeks since I stopped distraction. In that time, I grew increasingly concerned that my right femur was longer than my left femur. My physical therapist estimated it was about 1 CM longer. Today I had follow up with Dr. D. and we now officially know that my right femur is indeed 1cm longer than my left femur. He instructed me to resume lengthening my left femur almost 1cm.
Another unexpected twist is that my bones have consolidated very quickly since the last x-ray, and Dr. D. is a bit concerned that there might be pre-consolidation in my left femur, which is the one I'll need to start lengthening again. In his office, we ran a quick test. He had me lengthen the femur 2mm in one session (that's not a typo!) while I was there in his office, which felt like it took forever since I'm used to lengthening only .33mm per session. He then had Ronnie run another series of x-rays and fortunately the nail expanded as designed (if the bone was preconsolidated, then the nail would not be able to expand, as he explained). But that isn't a 100% guarantee that it won't preconsolidate.
I am to lengthen 3x/day for the next 7 days. The nuvasive rep will call me tomorrow to reprogram my ERC machine to allow that (remember, the ERC thinks I've already lengthened 7.5 cm on my left feur). Dr. D. wants me back in Las Vegas for another (hopefully final) set of measurements two weeks from now. At that time, if my left femur did not lengthen as it should have, he will perform an outpatient surgery the same day to re-break the left femur. If that's needed, he said he will run it through my insurance, and he will charge me his exact cost. Although that is reassuring to hear, I really hope it lengthens as designs and it doesn't come to that!
The news was a little bittersweet. He confirmed what I thought, but it's a tough pill to swallow to resume lengthening the one (left) femur. He said the other option is to reverse the longer (right) femur, but I really don't want to do that on principle alone. I'm very much ready to be finished with this. I started the process in May, and I wasn't anticipating that I'd still be lengthening in September. My advice for everyone out there is to know things frequently don't go according to the plan. Having said that, we're talking about 7 days which in the grand scheme of things isn't that big of a deal.
Dr. D. and his staff is great. By the way, as far as I could tell I was his only patient this afternoon. I was literally in his office for over 3 hours! You definitely get the feeling that he cares. I'll keep everyone updated.
Hey VerticalPush! Thanks for making this diary.
1. For people who don't live near Las Vegas, is there any cost advantage to going with Dr. Debiparshad instead of Mahoubian?
2. What apartment / caretaker service did you end up going with and why?
3. What are some costs you didn't expect?
4. How much total money would you budget for Stryde internal femurs with Dr. Debiparshad?
Thanks!!
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