Rozbruch- Internal Femurs with Stryde

Edit Post

Quote from: TouchingTheSky on November 03, 2019, 09:19:03 PMHey Tiggy,

Congrats on a successful lengthening.  I just have one question.  Are your femurs noticeably longer than your tibia; in other words, is the proportional difference from before the surgery obvious to people?

Thanks,
TTS

Hi there,

Thanks. Well I've added 3 inches to my femurs so yes they are longer than the tibias, but how noticeable it is to other people I can't tell you since I am not one of them. When you are around other people you are usually dressed fully lol so i doubt anyone would even notice anything out of the ordinary unless they are a member of this site lol. When you are nked before another person then she or he may ask a question about it, but even this I find unlikely because there are so many people with all kinds of proportions out in the world that raising issues with your proportions would hardly be at the forefront of their mind. I haven't been nked in front of another person yet so I can't tell you whether I got any feedback about this. Either way how my proportions are perceived to another person is seriously the last thing in this world that I care about lol. Sorry I couldn't be of more help

Edit Post

Quote from: Ghostfish on November 04, 2019, 12:52:03 AMHi Tiggy

Excellent!!   I was out of forum for a while and found you have gone really far already!!  Congrats on your successful gaining!  Wow even you are going to all the way 8 cm!!.  Absolutely fabulous!  I also have a little of regret in my mind that I didn't push it to all the way, but actually couldn't because I have family and job to take care of.  I am very happy for you.  Yeah, 5'6" is a really decent height and with a good lift, you will feel completely average!!
Regarding privacy, yeah, I also agree with you and cena that it is always better to keep it secret.  I even decided not to see some people to avoid any disclosure about this surgery. 
Again, congrats!!

Hey Ghostfish,

Thanks man I really appreciate you popping by and sending good wishes my way. I am also greatful for your support throughout this journey and I hope you know that it meant a lot.  How far did you go with lengthening and what's your height now? Try not to regret anything. You did what you did for a reason and you had a very good reason at that. We tend to forget these feelings as time goes on. But I can't blame you because I also knew that if I stop early (R was telling me to call it quits at 6.5cm) I will regret it for years to come. I'm the type of person that if I feel I made a mistake in anything I tend to beat myself up over these mistakes. For this reason I try to avoid putting myself in that position given the plethora of other things in life that I have yet to regret lol

Edit Post

Hi tiggy
Thanks for your kind words!  I could have pushed 1-2 cm more but didn't have more time at that moment.  My wife was burned out by herself LOL.  I am also sort of a perfectionist so I generally push hard to reach high, although the real outcomes may be not that high lol.  Anyway, I did what I could do at that moment.  Now I am accepting it pretty much.  You will reach the max so there will be no regret for you!  That is really awesome!  Hope your recovery goes well!

Edit Post

Quote from: Ghostfish on November 05, 2019, 01:13:12 AMHi tiggy
Thanks for your kind words!  I could have pushed 1-2 cm more but didn't have more time at that moment.  My wife was burned out by herself LOL.  I am also sort of a perfectionist so I generally push hard to reach high, although the real outcomes may be not that high lol.  Anyway, I did what I could do at that moment.  Now I am accepting it pretty much.  You will reach the max so there will be no regret for you!  That is really awesome!  Hope your recovery goes well!

Thanks Ghostfish. I honestly expected to be in a far better position than I find myself in currently but I also didn't expect to lengthen for 4-5 months so I guess it's fair. I hope once I'm officially done in few days things can move more quickly. Its crazy when I look back and realize just how long this process took for me. But oh well, it's a nice lesson on timelines for others to be aware of.

Edit Post

yooo tiggy I was wondering about length discrepancy too I feel like my right leg is shorter and it kind of reflects on my gait, but I will check tomorrow with Mahboubian and see if they're even but then again it could be that one leg is tighter but that's true and even I know it. Also as far as the people noticing that you got taller I'm in the same boat!! haha a lot of people I would see say I got taller and get a little suspicious maybe not of me getting surgery to increase height, because I did disclose to a lot of people that I was going to get surgery for hernias that I have in my growin area, which kind of worked in my favor as well because It's also a pretty believable excuse as to my funny gait to everybody. I won't disclose the CLL procedure ever to anyone except the people I have already haha, hope you reach the 8cm without major issues if at all

Edit Post

Hey movie,

It's likely that the feeling of unequal legs is caused by tightness. I actually need to work on stretching my right leg to loosen it up but given the workload in school at the moment it's hard to find time. But classes are done in 4 weeks so during my winter break I will spend a good deal of time stretching my legs. Frankly I haven't stretched them for the past 2 months and I'm even surprised myself that I am able to continue lengthening. However R did tell me I had above average flexibility pre op so that's probably the reason why I'm getting away with not stretching. But anyway you should consider spending more time on the right leg to loosen it up. Eventually the gait should take care of itself. Definitely send me a post here after your visit with dr M

As to disclosing ll, it's very difficult keeping silent without somehow offending others. I was discussing this with my mom and made it clear that I expect for her to keep quiet about it to others who ask. I have no doubt that she will but in her words "people aren't stupid and they can tell a grown man out of puberty doesn't just get taller out of nowhere" lol. While this is certainly true I hate having to give others explanations. I personally wouldn't probe someone who didn't want to discuss such personal aspects of their lives. At the same time, if people see you got taller they will be curious how that happened even if they don't think you got surgery done. Based on that I expect they would ask what actually happened and this is when I'm at a loss for what to say so as not to offend their intelligence and tell lies that are clearly untrue from their perspective. I just need to sit on it and think of how to approach this I guess. It sucks that after going through ll, some of us also have to come up with ways to keep something very private actually private

Edit Post

hey tiggy,

i'm ny-based and considering dr. r. hoping to keep it to around $100k, have you exceeded that since you began your treatment w/ him? thanks for any insight you have into that, as cost is the primary limiting factor atm

Edit Post

Quote from: loushmoo on November 09, 2019, 02:36:43 AMhey tiggy,

i'm ny-based and considering dr. r. hoping to keep it to around $100k, have you exceeded that since you began your treatment w/ him? thanks for any insight you have into that, as cost is the primary limiting factor atm

Hey,

If your insurance covers nothing at all, expect to pay between 110-120k.

Edit Post

A fellow member of this forum sent me some questions, some of which I wasn't asked before. I was given the permission to post the questions here so that other members can benefit as well.

The questions:
Hi tiggy congratulations on gaining your desired height. I was wondering how your experience was with dr rozbruch, Also in your psych evaluation what do you think makes a person the right candidate for the surgery and get approved by your psych advisor. Also i wanted to know if there is any way you could describe the pain and discomfort during the course of your lengthening period. I am also considering dr rozbruch as my number 1 option for this surgery

My reply:
Overall my experience was good. If you are local to him and cost isn't an issue then I would certainly recommend him. He knows what he is doing, has expertise and follows a concervatice approach to lengthening (while this is not a bad trait to have given the horrible outcomes some have had with other negligent surgeons, my frustrations with this can be found in my diary). If either of the above are not checked off then I would suggest going with someone cheaper and just as safe. Even Paley is cheaper so that's something to think about. The cost of living in NY is very high unless you are willing to fly back and forth after the first month or so post op.

The psych evaluation, LOL- I'll be honest and say that in my opinion the psych evaluation is total bull . I think it's just a way for R to direct patients to his buddies so that they can earn extra cash on the vulnerability of his patients. The entire evaluation felt absolutely asinine to me. You are asked questions about why you want the surgery and then she asks you to look at images and then talk about what you are seeing. Then you are asked to draw images that you associate with some words she tells you. At the end of the "evaluation" she told me I'll receive her "assessment" of our meeting within a week, even though she did tell me I was good to go (yes this wasn't a newsflash to me). I have yet to receive her assessment lol. I just think if you are going to charge someone so much cash for 1 hr (I can't recall her fee exactly but I think it may have been like $500), the least you can do after putting the patient through all those exercises is at least some assessment of what your performance may have meant based on some psychological standard. But surely enough there was no reply from her after that meeting. Oh and even if you have insurance, she doesn't accept any insurance from dr R patients (do you think this surprised me? Lol). All of these lead me to believe this is just a ploy to drain us of cash. So unless you are a total mental case, you will "pass" with flying colors. Don't worry about that. Just have the cash.

If you read my diary, my pain level since the beginning hovered around 1 to 3 max. It only started getting worse after numbness and nerve pain started to kick in along with the burning sensation. This made it difficult to sleep at night because my shins felt like they were on fire. This was about a 5 level pain and about an 8 level discomfort. Keep in mind I have high pain tolerance also.

The overall pain with this surgery is difficult to describe. You got pins under your skin so for the first month or so it will be tough to sleep on your side. The pain is the regular type and nothing unique to this surgery. Think of getting hit by a bat (lightly lol) on the upper side part of your femur while you are under anesthesia and then waking up, suddenly feeling the pain and then having to try and sleep on that side at night. Obviously it's going to be painful and uncomfortable. In hindsight it's difficult to describe sensations of pain once the feelings pass because we tend to block those out as we recover. It's difficult for me to recall the pain now, except for the nerve pain and burning sensations perhaps because those are what really left their mark on my memory because of the higher pain. I don't even remember if I described the pain in my diary in detail as I was going through it but feel free to read it from the beginning. 

At least for me ll was about 70-80% easier than I expected. Keep in mind I really prepared for the worst. I literally woke up from surgery and the first thing I did was to look down just to make sure I still had my legs. In fact up until I closed my eyes on the operating table I couldn't believe I was about to get my legs broken. I had an internal struggle with myself the entire time because I knew how bad things can be just from reading other people's diaries. Luckily all of worst case scenarios were avoided (except for the nerve pain, for which I wasn't mentally prepared because I just thought "this probably wouldn't happen to me so I'm good to go" and also because that sensation is very new for most people and you just don't know how it could feel) and if not for that, I would say this surgery for me was at worst a 3 on the pain scale. I also happened to have the nerve pain earlier and it seems more intense than so many other people who got femurs done. I guess it can't be all too easy! Hope this helps.

Edit Post

Hey all,

So it's been 2 months since my last update and about 8 months since surgery. I had a follow up with dr R today. I was told bone growth is coming in well. We estimate that in a few months (close to 1yr mark from initial surgery) things should be close to consolidated fully. I think this estimate is too optimistic on his part and I estimate a full consolidation closer to June or July. However I will be seeing him again in 4 months at which point I will update the forum accordingly.

My walk is improving slowly. I haven't been diligent with stretching and I still wobble toward my right side when walking. Dr R told me this will improve slowly as I heal more and said I should be doing PT exercises for Hip flexors and quads to help improve my walking.

I still hang on to rails when I go up and down larger steps. The goal now is to find 10-15 min a day to do stretches to get myself back to normal. This shouldn't be a big issue most of the week when I am not in class but at home. Other than this there is not much new to report. The recovery from this surgery is a slow process and involves lots of patience and diligence to do PT in order to get back to normal faster.

I can tell you  that these 8cms are truly life changing and have had such a big impact on my confidence level. As I've mentioned elsewhere in my diary, I have had a few friends notice and comment on my height increase. Since then I've spent the new yr with family and close family friends but No one had commented about the height. However I could tell when looking at them  that most of them knew something was different but they couldn't quite figure out what had changed.

I intend to update this diary after every follow up with dr R (absent any other new and significant developments) but given that these will be much more rare going forward, so will the updates. I thank you all for reading, encouraging and advising me along the way. This forum is truly a treasure if used correctly and I'm glad to have had the wisdom of veterans who had advised and educated me in this journey. As always please feel free to send questions/comments my way, if there are any.  Be well and happy new year to everyone!