So today concludes my very painful arm lengthening. I should be at 5cm each arm, i'll have to wait for x-rays to confirm; the exact number doesn't really matter at this point. I wouldn't say the actual lengthening was painful, it was first the trauma from the surgery, and the swelling. Then as soon as that cleared I developed pain in my shoulder region and right after returning from my flight from Florida and starting my antibiotics, the pain traveled to the area between the shoulder and neck and was truly unbearable. I didn't sleep for a few days because lying down would trigger the pain and being active would get rid of it. So i stopped lengthening and stretched a lot for a few days until the neck pain went away. What remained was the shoulder pain and the difficulty sleeping. I'm not sure exactly why laying down would trigger the shoulder pains but it always happened at night and it was horrible. Some days I fell asleep sitting up on my bed while staring at the wall. I would wake up every 15 minutes and pass out like that over and over.
Unlike my leg lengthening, I had no flexibility issues. At no time during the lengthening did I lose the ability to hyper-extend my arm and I never felt any numbness or loss of finger strength.
What I think of the results: I'm thrilled. Totally exceeded my expectations. After doing mock ups, I thought that I would have to stop early, 3-4cm because I would feel self conscious of my humerus to forearm ratio, but at no point did I look at my arms and think they looked worse off than what I started with. It was where my hands fell on my body that I was unhappy with and when I hit 4cm I looked at photos of myself and knew I needed to continue. After examining how long my humerus looked in various different poses I proceeded to lengthen to 5cm.
Before lengthening my arms I didn't feel comfortable in anything but flat shoes, but now i'm back to wearing normal athletic shoes and soon enough i'll break out the old boot collection. I am glad I wore flat shoes for the first few months though, because they helped me recover. Learning to walk essentially barefoot is a lot more difficult than having the assistance of a cushioned shoe, and I attribute that to getting on my feet quicker than expected.
Having said all this, this journey has been extremely personal; I did the arm lengthening for myself. No one noticed my proportions being off before my arm lengthening, but it was something that nagged at me and the satisfaction of the collective journey is finally hitting me. Unfortunately, the first time standing in front of the mirror after having lengthened my femurs and tibias was unsettling. I was upset at myself for not thinking about my arm length, but I knew I was being a brat because I had achieved my dream of getting taller. Despite my efforts to forget about the issue that I had fabricated, I knew eventually I would want to lengthen my arms. But it was tough, because there was so little information to go off of and no reference photos besides a music video of Apotheosis. Even though I was excited to get my humerus lengthened there was a part of me that was nervous of how I would feel about the result. Would I only be able the lengthen a little? Would that be enough? Would I develop another complex? So many questions clouded my ability to appreciate that I was going to fix what was bothering me.
Well, now I stand in front of the mirror completely content with how I look. Some of you mentioned at 4cm how surprised you were at how natural it looked. My honest opinion is that I can tell, and it's not so much that it looks natural, it just doesn't look wrong. It looks good, and especially for having gained 2 inches in a segment of the arm. I'm still a bit puzzled at how I was able to pull it off without having to stop myself, but I won't complain.
Lastly, one thing I learned from this journey is that I am a little crazy. I can't lie to myself anymore about this. It's a shame I couldn't just be grateful with the 4.5 inch gain in my height and just continue on with my life. But things didn't turn out that way and I felt the need to take things a little further by lengthening my arms. I hope you guys realize that there are people who have lengthened as much as I did and were happy without arm lengthening. This isn't a requirement, it's just the choice I made.
I really hope this diary helped you guys out and provided some insight in the complete limb lengthening journey. Please remember when posting on this message board; this is a place for information and for support. Don't tear each other down, help each other grow.
Peace
