Quadrilateral lengthening - Dr. Paley & Robbins

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How's your experience been? How are things moto?

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Hey, I've had similar pain when twisting leg (femur though). In my case it was new bone growth rubbing against soft tissues. Your doctor should be able to assess that on your x-ray.

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I think I'm in an OK state now. I've been focusing on PT, surviving pain period, logging my pain meds etc. My pain is currently manageable >2w after femur surgery. I'll add details soon.

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I know I'm embarrassingly behind my own diary. I think I left off from my 1st surgery on Jan 18th. So here you go, as much as I remembered + what I had in my notebook. A lot of tiny details happen when you're hospitalized. Here I only cover what I think matter. During my hospital stay, my sister came in every day to bring extra food, help me with chords, and a great emotional support. Things would be much harder without her.

01/18/2022:
  * Tibia surgery early AM, finished around 2-3pm. My poor sister was so worried why it took so long. Eventually she could meet me in my recovery room.
  * Right after tibias surgery, I felt fine. My sister also said my skin color looks normal (Note to compare to later femurs surgery)
  * My feet are wrapped with a "pumping" machine which stimulate blood flow. Also, my tibias are covered with the ice-cube machine to help reduce swollen
  * When being hospitalized, nurses visited you every 4h. I think many other LL patients already covered this. They occasionally give you pain meds, muscle relax meds, etc.
  * ~21:00: After like 30min stimulating my peepee with youtube videos playing sound of waterfall (lol), I could pee a good 1000 ml. Somehow managed not to wet the bed. Feeling much better & lighter after letting go of that toxic fluid.
  * 23:05: started to have roller coaster pain, pain level 4-7
  * 23:55: Shooting pain wave from midnight to 2am. I tried to sleep through it without pressing the "Pain" button to call nurses. Eventually it passed after 2am. Some background here: I used to dislocate my right shoulder due to snowboarding. That day, I waited 45min for rescue team, 15min for them to roll me downhill (in lots of pain), drove myself to the hospital in 45min, waited 3h for doc to come to fix my shoulder. The last hour before I meet the doc, I almost passed out that I couldn't standup by myself for x-ray, so that a male nurse had to hold me. No pain meds whatsoever during this whole period. Anyway, I think this pain experience prepared me a lot for my LL surgery in general.

01/19/2022:
  * 04:40: A nurse came in to draw 2 tubes of my blood
  * 11:50: 2 PTs came in to teach me basic PT, how to use wheelchair

01/20/2022:
  * 14:30: With my sister help, I was able to wheel to the toilet, transfer & make a bowel movement. Feel even much better than after peeing.
  * 15:00: Finished PT. They taught me how to use the walker on this day. It was very jerky as it was my ever 1st time with a walker.

01/21/2022:
  * 08:00: Some constant pain level 2-5 had bothered me since the night before. I asked for 2 pills of Tylenol 325mg. After breakfast & meds, the pain was more comfortable.
  * 10:15: Dr. Robbins & nurses came in to check on me. I might have wiggled my feet too much that right after they left, I had shooting pain level 7-8 in my right tiba. For the 1st time I pressed "Pain" button & asked for 1 oxycodone 5mg. My nurse this day Alex was very nice & thorough. I got a high relaxing feeling after oxy, then the pain was also gone. Alex carefully went through the discharge document w/ me. 1 important point she mentioned was to stop taking Xarelto (prevent blood clot) at least 4 days before my femurs surgery.
  * 15:00: Discharged. Then nothing eventful at home this day if I remembered correctly. Lower legs were still very swollen. They gave me the ice-cube machine for this.

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Quote from: tallerwouldbenice on February 16, 2022, 03:53:28 AMHey, I've had similar pain when twisting leg (femur though). In my case it was new bone growth rubbing against soft tissues. Your doctor should be able to assess that on your x-ray.

Then did they do anything about your case i.e. new bone rubbing soft tissues? Do you still have this pain?

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In my case also that new bone growth is there on the side rubbing the soft tissues and it pains a lot as well for me. Dr. Robbins showed me in my X-rays but he said it will get dissolved in few days until then you will feel some discomfort. Definitely that's a lot of discomfort for me and when I press them I feel like 2 big rocks  attached to the side of my legs. Now I feel like that discomfort is slowly fading away. The physician assistant Dayna mentioned me that you can take ibuprofen for a short duration that will stop the new bone growth on the side. But I asked her isn't ibuprofen interfere with bone growth at later stage. She explained me that you are not advised to take ibuprofen only at the time of bone consolidation after the lengthening period is over. Now you are at the very early stage and you can take the ibuprofen to suppress the extra bone growth on the side. I bought the ibuprofen but still I haven't started taking it.

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I took ibuprofen and the pain disappeared in about 1-2 weeks

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Quote from: GodsGrace on February 17, 2022, 03:42:50 PMIn my case also that new bone growth is there on the side rubbing the soft tissues and it pains a lot as well for me. Dr. Robbins showed me in my X-rays but he said it will get dissolved in few days until then you will feel some discomfort. Definitely that's a lot of discomfort for me and when I press them I feel like 2 big rocks  attached to the side of my legs. Now I feel like that discomfort is slowly fading away. The physician assistant Dayna mentioned me that you can take ibuprofen for a short duration that will stop the new bone growth on the side. But I asked her isn't ibuprofen interfere with bone growth at later stage. She explained me that you are not advised to take ibuprofen only at the time of bone consolidation after the lengthening period is over. Now you are at the very early stage and you can take the ibuprofen to suppress the extra bone growth on the side. I bought the ibuprofen but still I haven't started taking it.

Not sure if I've experienced the same just lat night (early 02/17/2022): Around 2AM while sleeping my left tibia felt noticeable pain in the exact spot where new bone is growing. I woke up to check and saw a bump. I slowly massaged & pushed it inward so that my skin area became flat as normal. As soon as this was done, the pain disappeared immediately. Well they said our body/bone heal while we sleep. If this was truly the case I think I was "lucky" to observe new grown bone & shaped it back myself! Nonetheless, this is just my guess. I'll wait until next Monday x-ray to see how it looks. The bump felt like a hard clay.

GodsGrace, were you referring to your femur or tibia?

My left & right femurs both showed new bones on the side according to 1st visit x-ray which was 1-2 weeks ago or something. During that time sleeping on either side was definitely uncomfortable. However I didn't notice any pain, maybe because they were dissolved now by this point, idk..

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Quote from: motoboarder on February 17, 2022, 07:10:52 PMNot sure if I've experienced the same just lat night (early 02/17/2022): Around 2AM while sleeping my left tibia felt noticeable pain in the exact spot where new bone is growing. I woke up to check and saw a bump. I slowly massaged & pushed it inward so that my skin area became flat as normal. As soon as this was done, the pain disappeared immediately. Well they said our body/bone heal while we sleep. If this was truly the case I think I was "lucky" to observe new grown bone & shaped it back myself! Nonetheless, this is just my guess. I'll wait until next Monday x-ray to see how it looks. The bump felt like a hard clay.

GodsGrace, were you referring to your femur or tibia?

My left & right femurs both showed new bones on the side according to 1st visit x-ray which was 1-2 weeks ago or something. During that time sleeping on either side was definitely uncomfortable. However I didn't notice any pain, maybe because they were dissolved now by this point, idk..

I was absolutely referring to Femurs for the side bone growth.

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Hi guys,

Feel strange to come back here after not writing my diary at all (lol). I was truly busy with rest & exercise during my lengthening phase. Before surgery, I collected a lot of useful tips from this forum. Hope I can give back something to help future people who consider this procedure.

Long story shorted, as a quad patient, I stopped lengthening tibias on 4/5 and femurs on 4/24/2022. I lengthened 4cm for tibias, 5.6cm for femurs (5.7 for my right femur cuz it was naturally a bit shorter). Now I'm in consolidation.

I didn't have a full diary. I figured people would come here looking for concise info. So feel free to ask me anything.

Full x-ray taken on 4/22/2022 (few days before stop lengthening altogether) https://imgur.com/jMpFnWZ

And 1st monthly x-ray (they forgot to order my femurs x-ray, so only tibias)
https://imgur.com/Kf1NdFX
https://imgur.com/miy8fVE
https://imgur.com/zk5FJqD