Where would you rank your pain on a 1-10 scale also do you plan on doing more surgeries ie femurs and hopefully you get full feeling back pretty soon
Quote from: Racurz on June 06, 2018, 12:43:44 PMWhere would you rank your pain on a 1-10 scale also do you plan on doing more surgeries ie femurs and hopefully you get full feeling back pretty soon
Thanks for the well wishes and I don't mean to sound mean, but you may get more out of life with much less of an investment by improving your reading comprehension and English writing skills. Anyway, I'll try to make sense of your run-on sentence and give an update on my journey so far.
Friday, June 8, 2018 - 4 weeks since stopping lengthening the tibias, 2 weeks since stopping the right femur
Today concludes the lengthening phase of my process, for a total of 7.5cm (almost 3"). Here are the x-rays on the last day of lengthening:
For the last two weeks, I've only been lengthening the left femur at 0.5mm/day, in order to make up for the leg length discrepancy. As I noted in a previous post, this was due to a strategic mistake - not correcting this discrepancy at the beginning of the lengthening process. Please learn from my experience and convince your doctor that you want to correct any discrepancies at the beginning of the lengthening, when you're much more flexible, and one extra turn a day won't make much of a difference.
Surprisingly, when I asked Dr. Paley about the timeline to walking with crutches and consolidation, he cleared me for walking with crutches and sent me to PT to learn the 4-point crutch gait. He also upped my weight bearing from 100lbs (2x50 in the tibias) to 120lbs with the walker, and said I could stand straight unassisted without a time limit, as long as the heels, knees and hips were stacked. Was anyone else using PRECICE cleared to walk with crutches the day of their last turn? I had stopped tibias 4 weeks ago, and the right femur 2 weeks ago, but I've still been lengthening the left femur, and indeed, it doesn't show any consolidation in the x-rays:
So that's what two weeks of consolidation in one femur looks like.
Anyway, trying to walk with crutches after not walking for three months, was really scary. Even standing on my own two feet was a balance challenge. I'll stick with the walker for a while.
Today I also flew back home. The flying process was pretty streamlined: you show up at the airline's "special services / wheelchair requests" counter and they'll take care of you. As in, someone will ask for your ID, give you the boarding pass, then someone else will wheel you into security, take any carry-ons you might have, hand you over to TSA for a pat down, then get your carry-ons back and wheel you to the gate. From there, a gate attendant will wheel you to the plane, help you transfer into a special narrow wheelchair, then transfer you to your seat. Tip: get the wheelchair cushion with you! The plane seat was surprisingly stiff - because I had lost so much of my glutes.
In theory, as a wheelchair passenger you can get upgraded for free to first class in order to be closer to the bathrooms, but that didn't happen in my case (JetBlue), likely due to a certain rude gate attendant (who will be mentioned in a complaint letter to JetBlue). Bathroom proximity was irrelevant in my case, since I couldn't fit the walker in the aisle anyway, so I used the restroom just before boarding, and stopped drinking an hour earlier. I did sip some water during the flight, but not much, so that I could last 6-7 hours without needing the restroom.
During the next few weeks I'll be focusing on improving my ankle dorsiflexion and regaining my balance while standing straight. I also plan to buy a stationary bike, since I suspect that cycling will improve knee flexibility quite a lot, and because I need the cardio exercise.
Over the past several weeks, I haven't been in pain at all, except when stretching. I'll be tapering off Gabapentin/Neurontin over the next 10 days, and will be taking two monthly x-rays to send to Dr. Paley. He said that I could be walking unassisted within the next 4-6 weeks.
Quote from: OverrideYourGenetics on June 10, 2018, 02:51:40 AMToday concludes the lengthening phase of my process,
First off, congratulations!
Quote from: OverrideYourGenetics on June 10, 2018, 02:51:40 AMHe said that I could be walking unassisted within the next 4-6 weeks.
Which would be a total of 8-10 weeks after stopping your tibias, 6-8 weeks for the right femur, and 4-6 for the left femur, correct?
I've noticed that Dr. Paley seemed more optimistic about consolidation times for me than Dr. Robbins or the PTs. We'll see, I guess!
Quote from: OverrideYourGenetics on June 10, 2018, 02:51:40 AMTip: get the wheelchair cushion with you! The plane seat was surprisingly stiff - because I had lost so much of my glutes.
I have found many seats to be uncomfortable post-surgery. I don't know if I'm alone in that.
Quote from: OverrideYourGenetics on June 10, 2018, 02:51:40 AMand said I could stand straight unassisted without a time limit
This is the one of the reasons I'm glad I only did femurs, at least as far as Precise 2.2 goes - I was able to stand unassisted pretty much from the get-go. Many things would be far tougher if I had not been able to.
Quote from: OverrideYourGenetics on June 10, 2018, 02:51:40 AMFor the last two weeks, I've only been lengthening the left femur at 0.5mm/day, in order to make up for the leg length discrepancy. As I noted in a previous post, this was due to a strategic mistake - not correcting this discrepancy at the beginning of the lengthening process. Please learn from my experience and convince your doctor that you want to correct any discrepancies at the beginning of the lengthening, when you're much more flexible, and one extra turn a day won't make much of a difference.
I asked about this, and they told me to wait until the end. I didn't push too hard, though.
Congratulations and thanks for sharing, OYG. Just goes to show that even careful planning and preparation can lead to unexpected obstacles.
Your diary is in no way obsolete because of STRYDE. A lot of the process is still relevant, and your opinion of being able to observe both technologies simultaneously carries much more weight than speculation.
Onward and upward!
So you paid around $150K for 7 cm even though you could do 7 cm on femurs alone. Yeah sure proportions will be better but not many would care if there is so much more money involved that could be spend wayyyy better.
LL people are a weird bunch.
Quote from: doomsday on June 13, 2018, 05:07:53 PMSo you paid around $150K for 7 cm even though you could do 7 cm on femurs alone. Yeah sure proportions will be better but not many would care if there is so much more money involved that could be spend wayyyy better.
LL people are a weird bunch.
...and some of them are committing basic reasoning errors.
1. I didn't decide upfront "Oh, I'll pay double the cost for femurs and get the same length just for the sake of proportions". When I chose quadrilateral and made the payment, my plan was to do 10cm, with the possibility of rebreaking in a year for 16cm. I stopped at 7.5cm several months later, and I still have the possibility of rebreaking.
2. "not many would care if there is so much more money involved that could be spend wayyyy better" - this isn't about how many would care. This decision was mine. I care. Maybe for me, that extra money was best spent preserving proportions, reducing the risk of osteoarthritis, and minimizing the recovery time, which we know increases more than arithmetically for every cm past the 5th in the femurs. Keep in mind that unlike Purushrottam, I'm in my late 30s.
If you're gonna re-break then yes, you will gave value for you money, otherwise it is just hard to justify spending so much .In the end it's your money and hopefully you're happy.
I'm glad you continued updating the diary. Yours is much more detailed and useful than mine. For example, I totally forgot to mention the small but critical detail: The walker doesn't fit on an airplane aisle. As a result, getting on board your flight was a bit of a logistical hurdle... especially because I was new to crutches at the time. Also, the plane ride was rather uncomfortable.
Anyways, good luck on your journey!
Friday, June 15 update. 5 weeks since stopping lengthening the tibias, 3 weeks since stopping the right femur, 1 since stopping the left
I've been home for a week, without much progress even though I've been using the walker a lot more. Also, my legs got swollen during the flight (normal for everyone), but the left leg wouldn't go back to normal:
Dr. Paley said to use elevation and compression socks. That didn't help.
But this morning I woke up to feel my left leg significantly more flexible than last night (by about 10%). The swelling is almost gone, literally overnight. It's easier to stretch the left knee (which has been extra stiff). Moral of the story: don't despair, even if there's no visible progress for a whole week after you stop lengthening.
Tuesday, July 10 update. 8.5 weeks since stopping lengthening the tibias, 6.5 weeks since stopping the right femur, 4.5 since stopping the left
It's been 3.5 weeks since my last update, and a lot of progress:
A pain I've had for 2-3 weeks under the right knee when walking has gone away. That seems to be how LL pains come and go.
The pain from the screws in the left hip is less, though I still can't fall asleep on my left side (on my right, I can). Doctors at the Institute said this should disappear within one year, but it feels it will be shorter than that.
Had x-rays taken a week ago and I was worried by some strange-looking aspects. Here are two of the views in that x-ray set (more at https://imgur.com/a/iph0938):
^^ The top wall of the femur in that side image looks VERY thin. The comparable image of the left femur shows a much thicker bone wall.
^^ The zigzag in the right fibula looks pretty weird.
Dr. Paley said I was ready to "walk full weight bearing" with crutches, and to start slowly and ditch them when I can carry them. About the two anomalies above, he said the zigzag is no concern, but hasn't replied to my question about the thin bone wall. I looked at past x-rays and it's always been like that; however, other people's femurs don't show this thin wall (here are fallen774's). Not sure what to make of this.
Anyway, with the above in mind I wanted to be cautious so instead of getting crutches, I started walking (not hopping) with the walker around the house. A few days later I managed to walk about 50 meters to the gym in my building, then back. It wasn't that hard.
Strength is coming back fast, and pains are diminishing (I've only felt pain when moving the legs; very little random pains when not doing anything).
Yesterday I went back to work, in the wheelchair. About 30% of my coworkers asked what happened, and those were the least Americanized ones. The rest didn't bat an eye. "Welcome back, do you need any help?", but no intrusive questions about "what happened". To those who did ask what happened, I told I had a leg length discrepancy (true) that gave me back pain when standing (I did have that pain, though I'm not sure due to what), and while correcting the discrepancy, I got BOTH legs lengthened, so I'm a couple inches taller now. That's how far it went so far with coworkers being curious. I feel most professionals in the Bay Area make an effort to not ask their coworkers personal health questions. I haven't been out to social gatherings yet, where being outside of a work relationship, I can talk to people about LL (and they care enough to be genuinely curious).
Today I felt comfortable moving from the walker to canes. I'm skipping the crutches step because regular (underarm) crutches seem obnoxious, and the canes provided enough support for balance and for the moderate pain I feel in the left leg when stepping. Not sure what forearm crutches would provide in addition, and I don't want to use too much support; I'd rather force my body to get back to walking unaided ASAP.
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