Starting Bilateral Tibial Surgery With Dr. Paley - Dec-02-2021

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Agreed that PT gives you a nice milestone during the day

Funny I also feel like napping around 2-3pm
Might be the gaba or some drug

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Yesterday, one of the worst days as I fell down from my wheelchair while I was getting ready for my PT. Oh man it was a lot of pain in femurs but after a pain killer it was ok. I immediately sent an email to Dr. Robbins explaining the situation and requesting for an xray appointment to make sure the nail is good. Then I left for PT and the PT was as usual and I was able to do all the stretches like the other days. I told the PT what happened in the morning so he said let's not do the standing using the walker today until we confirm everything is good in the xrays. By the time Dr.Robbins got back to me it was like late afternoon 3 PM and he advised for these kind of emergencies you need to call the front desk and book an appointment immediately and don't rely on emails as we don't check the emails frequently especially when we are in the operation room. I called the front desk and booked an appointment for today morning.  I went to the clinic after my PT today, took the xray, and by gods' grace everything is alright. Initially, Dr. Robbins had told me that his physician assistant Dayna will evaluate the xrays and let me know if anything is wrong but he himself showed up today and evaluated my xrays and told me not to worry as everything looks good and the nail is not that fragile. I was so relieved after that.

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Yesterday, one of the worst days as I fell down from my wheelchair while I was getting ready for my PT. Oh man it was a lot of pain in femurs but after a pain killer it was ok. I immediately sent an email to Dr. Robbins explaining the situation and requesting for an xray appointment to make sure the nail is good. Then I left for PT and the PT was as usual and I was able to do all the stretches like the other days. I told the PT what happened in the morning so he said let's not do the standing using the walker today until we confirm everything is good in the xrays. By the time Dr.Robbins got back to me it was like late afternoon 3 PM and he advised for these kind of emergencies you need to call the front desk and book an appointment immediately and don't rely on emails as we don't check the emails frequently especially when we are in the operation room. I called the front desk and booked an appointment for today morning.  I went to the clinic after my PT today, took the xray, and by gods' grace everything is alright. Initially, Dr. Robbins had told me that his physician assistant Dayna will evaluate the xrays and let me know if anything is wrong but he himself showed up today and evaluated my xrays and told me not to worry as everything looks good and the nail is not that fragile. I was so relieved after that.

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Quote from: tallerwouldbenice on March 03, 2022, 04:29:35 AMAgreed that PT gives you a nice milestone during the day

Funny I also feel like napping around 2-3pm
Might be the gaba or some drug

Yes, I believe it is gaba as that's the only drug I take after my lunch. The pain killer timing varies as I am taking 1 tablet every 6 hours now.

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Quote from: tallerwouldbenice on March 03, 2022, 04:29:35 AMAgreed that PT gives you a nice milestone during the day

Funny I also feel like napping around 2-3pm
Might be the gaba or some drug

Yes, I believe it is gaba as that's the only drug I take after my lunch. The pain killer timing varies as I am taking 1 tablet every 6 hours now.

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Glad you were fine GodsGrace! I had a similar experience in PT weeks ago. I was transferring carelessly from my wheelchair to the bike there (the one side by side with the wall, its seat is quite higher than a wheelchair's). I fell forward & before my right foot barely touched the ground, PT Mike caught me like a fish from behind & pulled me back up hard! It was scary as f** & affected my mood/performance for the whole day. We just gotta be really slow & careful in all of our movements/transfers.

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Quote from: motoboarder on March 03, 2022, 01:07:45 PMGlad you were fine GodsGrace! I had a similar experience in PT weeks ago. I was transferring carelessly from my wheelchair to the bike there (the one side by side with the wall, its seat is quite higher than a wheelchair's). I fell forward & before my right foot barely touched the ground, PT Mike caught me like a fish from behind & pulled me back up hard! It was scary as f** & affected my mood/performance for the whole day. We just gotta be really slow & careful in all of our movements/transfers.

Yeah man we need to be careful. Mine was a great big stunt and even now I get goose bumps if I think about it.

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March-14-2022 - Tibia+56 - Femur+39

Sorry guys for the delayed update. I am trying to update the forum at least once a week but somehow finding it hard to do that. I will try my best to do so hereafter. I had my doctors's appointment on March-11-2022 but my original appointment was supposed to be on March-16-2022. Dr.Robbins is going to be on vacation this whole week and available only after March-21-2022 so they gave me the appointment on the 11th. Everything is good so far except the 4 mm discrepancies between the tibias. During my last visit Dr.Robbins said that the right tibia is lagging behind left tibia by 4 mm but during this visit and he measured that the left tibia is lagging behind right tibia by 4 mm. I asked him how he replied I don't know and that's what the x-rays say. Let's see how the future x-rays are going to be. The discrepancies between femurs are just 1 mm for now so nothing to worry about femurs right now.

I am getting tight on the knees and tibias. I believe I have a little bit of duck ass and ballerina feet. But while standing with the walker I am able to straighten my knees and tuck my bu*t in and keep my heel straight as well and it is almost toughing the floor. I expect the situation to get worse as I lengthen more but I hope once I stop my lengthening the situation gets better day by day. I slowly got used to the dorsiflexion boots what the doctor's office gave me (from Falks prosthetics). Now I am wearing that boot for about 15-16 hours everyday and also through out the night. Initially it was really tough but gradually I increased the amount of time I wear that. The target is to wear for 20 hours. Let's see. It's just I sweat a lot so wearing for a lot of time makes me sweat in the legs a lot and even when I use the fan it's still not helping with the sweating and makes my leg so itchy in the feet especially between the fingers.

I reached 2 inches on last Saturday (March-12-2022) and asked my wife to stand next to me. Oh boy! I can definitely feel a lots of difference. I felt like her top of the head was completely under my eyes. Such a great feeling!

My x-rays can be seen using the following link. The radiology guys didn't take the femurs together. Even the doctor was pis*ed off about that. The first 2 images are femurs and the rest 3 are tibias.

https://imgur.com/a/i6GY8SA

Lengthening statistics so far,

Tibia: 27.75 mm
Femur: 23.5 mm
Total: 51.25 mm

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5cm already! That's huge!

Regarding sweaty feet, maybe there are other solutions... Sprays or talc powder or something like that...

For the discrepancy, I read here somewhere that one should press on the ERC when lengthening. I did initially, but as my x-rays were always perfect I kinda stopped doing that. Maybe try that, for fear that the discrepancy increases. By the way, it doesn't matter what side of the leg you put the ERC against. You just need to be close to the nail.

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Quote from: tallerwouldbenice on March 14, 2022, 08:51:22 PM5cm already! That's huge!

Regarding sweaty feet, maybe there are other solutions... Sprays or talc powder or something like that...

For the discrepancy, I read here somewhere that one should press on the ERC when lengthening. I did initially, but as my x-rays were always perfect I kinda stopped doing that. Maybe try that, for fear that the discrepancy increases. By the way, it doesn't matter what side of the leg you put the ERC against. You just need to be close to the nail.


Thanks for the talc powder suggestion. How come I wasn't even thinking about it, LOL.  I used to keep my ERC machine on the side when I started off with the tibia and that's when I started hearing the clicking sound so I decided to keep the ERC machine on the top of my tibia and after that I never heard the clicking sound. I will continue to do so what I am doing right now and see what happens.

How are you doing with your progress? Sorry brother, I need to spend little bit more time on the forum to read yours and few other diaries but I am not having enough time to do so. Just trying to keep myself busy with other things to kill the time for now.