All done! Now in consolidation - should be 4-6 weeks for partial weight-bearing, and then another 4-6 weeks from there to walking without any assistance.
I hit 7.5cm a few days ago -- I think on Thursday (98 days since surgery) -- and since then, I've just been adjusting my right leg to get it to the same length as my left. It's been three days since Thursday and I think both legs look pretty even now, and I feel much more even when standing up on my walker now. I think I'm going to call it and just closely monitor how my legs look over the next week. The doctor said that if I still want to lengthen / shorten in a week's time, I'll be able to, since the bones won't have consolidated that much.
I'm feeling really happy - overall the journey was pretty smooth. The only big hiccup was that the first month of lengthening was pretty painful on my left leg, but that's because I was accidentally lengthening it too much. If you're using a NuVasive product and the second gen of the ERC, beyond making sure you keep your legs a good distance apart while lengthening, keep monitoring your leg lengths, especially if you're small like me. A lot of times my X-ray measurements didn't line up with how much I thought I had lengthened, and I have a theory that it's an ERC issue, because even after catching the issue of one leg being longer than the other and making sure I was keeping my legs far apart during lengthening, sometimes I could feel my other leg lengthening (basically I'd feel the motor in motion) while having the ERC on the other leg. I know the magnet is really strong, so despite keeping the legs apart, I still felt like the ERC would sometimes lengthen the other leg unintentionally. It's an unproven theory but seems likely to me.
Also, if you ever have to lengthen more on one leg for some reason (like correcting an imbalance), its good to keep a separate journal where you keep track of how many lengthening sessions you did per day + per leg and what you think the overall lengthening amount is so far, because the ERC doesn't allow you to skip sessions on one leg. So if you only lengthen one leg in a session, it'll still keep the counter going for the other leg, making it look like you lengthened both when you only did one. Also, keep in mind that the X-ray measurements have some margin of error, so always good to have some way of comparing how much length you think you got vs what the x-ray says you got. Just keep my experience in mind - if one leg is finding lengthening a lot more painful than the other, ask your doctor if he/she thinks this is what's going on. The act of lengthening using the ERC should not be painful, so definitely speak up if you're finding it very painful.
Now the game plan is to work really hard on both stretching everything out and strengthening my core, glutes, quads, and whatever else i can do. I still have the anterior pelvic tilt and my quads and glutes are pretty weak, so I'm really eager for any non weightbearing strengthening exercises for someone who did femurs. If you have any, please share! I'm thinking of using the leg press for quads, glute bridges for glutes, a lot of different core exercises, a lot of the exercise bike, squats in the pool, and all that kind of stuff. I'd love to make the transition to walking a little smoother by really working hard this month, although I don't know if that's a pipe dream. I know there's a lot of great diaries of past LL'ers who are walking now, so going to take some time to look through those for tips.
Not the best quality (my phone camera sucks) but here are the x-rays:
https://imgur.com/a/3hghmgd
