Posted on Oct 22, 2016, 11:36 am
#41
Hello Forum,
Sorry for the very long absence, the forum can be a bit of a toxic place and I wanted to stay away for awhile.
Just to recap for those that have already read through my journal and don't want to go back - I had stopped lengthening in April at what I thought at the time was 8CM because of really bad ballerina and knee bending. The hope was that I would fix it and then continue to do 10 CM before getting the nail and going home.
I did end up fixing it, but it took me more than 4 months and by that point my bones had started to consolidate and I was no longer able to lengthen. I tried to convince Dr. Barinov to re-break the bone but he told me that it would be far too dangerous to attempt this late in the game for various reasons and that I would have to wait another year if I ever wanted to break the bone again.
Of course I was incredibly disappointed, but the truth is that I have no one else to blame but myself. I simply did not put in the work required to fix my ballerina, and I just waited for it to get better on its own.
The current update is that I was supposed to get the nail a month ago but I developed an infection because I began skipping my bandage changes.. the doctors will not operate until the infection has cleared for at least a month.. so I'm now hoping to get it in the next 2 weeks.
Another thing that happened is that I was told by Dr. Barinov that I did not gain 8 CM as originally thought, because the clinic where I get the x-rays taken zooms in 10% and therefore I am likely 173CM. It's not a bad height, but far less than what I had came for.. so I am pretty upset about it.
I'm going to take this time to give everyone who is planning on doing external tibias some advice.
1. Do not listen to anyone that tells you that this is going to be easy or that it was easier for them than they expected. My mistake was that Mercusio (my LL mentor who I met with before the surgery and gave me advice based on his experience with LATN external tibias with Dr. Barinov) made it seem like it was a lot easier than it was, and I fell into the trap of taking the seriousness of stretching and walking for granted. Do not make this mistake. If you are lengthening, you NEED to stretch EVERY single day and you need to stand up and walk EVERY SINGLE DAY (granted you are doing external tibias and the doctor allows weight bearing). I will say that for him, it was in fact much easier and he was just giving me advice based on his own experience.
In the beginning, I did not stretch and I did not use the foot holder as much as I should have. If you are expecting to be babysat at this clinic, go elsewhere because they absolutely will not hover over you if you are not doing what you need to do. There is no physiotherapist services offered at this clinic and it is nearly impossible to find a physiotherapist that is familiar with this procedure in Volgograd.. believe me I tried for months and no one was able to find one for me.
The problem with this clinic is that you are left to do pretty much everything on your own, it is just simply the russian mentality. The doctors and nurses are good and they are helpful when you ask for help, but they are not like Western doctors - they will not come to you and they will not baby you. You need to be proactive and you need to be disciplined on your own.
They will show you what exercises you need to do, but you must ask them questions as they will assume that you are aware of what needs to be done. The benefit of this clinic, is that there are many patients who are doing lengthening that have had the experience and will guide you.. unfortunately, when I arrived at the clinic - almost everyone had just began lengthening..
2. USE THE FOOT HOLDER WHILE YOU ARE SLEEPING, AND FROM DAY ONE. This is probably the best advice I can give you. Your muscles do not want to be stressed and stretched because of the new bone length and they will resist the more you lengthen. You MUST push back against this resistance, and keep your muscles in the stretched position as long as you can everyday. It does not matter how uncomfortable it is to keep the foot holders on, they fking suck but if you want to lengthen without problems then you need to suck it up. I hated the foot holders and they were incredibly uncomfortable to sleep with, but my need to be comfortable and my laziness with the foot holders cost me lots of trouble, money and height.
3. Walk as much as you can, and do not lay in bed. The longer you remain inactive, the more difficult it becomes to walk. Push through the pain, and don't get discouraged because of how slow you're moving and how tired and bored you are of trying to walk down the hall. If you walk everyday for at least 2 hours minimum, you will recover much faster, walking will be much easier, you will feel less pain quicker and you will prevent ballerina much better. Walking is honestly, key and will get you to where you want to be. It only really sucks in the beginning and while you're lengthening, but it gets better really quickly if you keep at it.
4. This is not a vacation. You are not here to get girls, you are not here to experience Russia and you are not here to make friends. This is the best way to fk up. I got so caught up with girls while I was here, that I stopped paying attention to what I needed to do. I was trying to distract myself from things going on in my life, by trying to go out to restaurants, hang out with the correction girls and socialize with everyone else. It's okay to want to have these things, but focus on your daily goals and then when you have time reward yourself.. the correction girls have it really easy, they barely need to do anything other than walk and they're always bored so it's easy for them to want to distract you - don't get caught up in this, they don't mean any harm but they simply don't understand what you need to be doing.
5. Set goals and don't let a single day go by that you do not meet these goals. Track how much time you spent stretching and how much time you've spent walking.. you need to have a routine and you need to do this from day one, if you get lazy - everything can fall apart.
A lot of what I'm saying is pretty obvious and everyone reading it is probably thinking, they already know these things - but honestly planning for this surgery and then going through it are two completely different things. Anyone who read my journal from the beginning will know how much planning I did and how ready I was.. things fell apart pretty quickly.
Ballerina is no joke. It will happen to every single person that does limb lengthening, if they do not actively fight it. What we are doing is not natural, your muscles, nerves and tendons will resist the lengthening and if you want to achieve your goals then you need to do everything you can to prevent it. Once you get ballerina, it is really difficult to fix and it will set you back months if you don't fix it. IF YOU GET BALLERINA, STOP LENGTHENING AND FIX IT - THEN CONTINUE LENGTHENING. DO NOT TRY TO KEEP LENGTHENING AND THINK THAT YOU WILL SIMPLY FIX IT ONCE YOU'VE GOTTEN TO YOUR GOAL. This will not happen the way you think it will, it is FAR more difficult to fix ballerina than to prevent it. I should have been done this whole process in May of 2016... but I'm still here in October, not having achieved my goal and still waiting to go home because I thought that I could lengthen and then worry about my ballerina after.
I do want to point out that I am really young, much younger than most members on this forum.. and I've been the youngest person to come to this clinic within the last two years. I will say that I think a lot of the lack of real discipline and the carelessness probably had to do with my age... but for those who think that because they're still young that they won't have problems with flexibility.. trust me, you being young isn't going to make this a breeze for you.
I'm open to questions now, so you can post on this journal as you please.
Sorry for the very long absence, the forum can be a bit of a toxic place and I wanted to stay away for awhile.
Just to recap for those that have already read through my journal and don't want to go back - I had stopped lengthening in April at what I thought at the time was 8CM because of really bad ballerina and knee bending. The hope was that I would fix it and then continue to do 10 CM before getting the nail and going home.
I did end up fixing it, but it took me more than 4 months and by that point my bones had started to consolidate and I was no longer able to lengthen. I tried to convince Dr. Barinov to re-break the bone but he told me that it would be far too dangerous to attempt this late in the game for various reasons and that I would have to wait another year if I ever wanted to break the bone again.
Of course I was incredibly disappointed, but the truth is that I have no one else to blame but myself. I simply did not put in the work required to fix my ballerina, and I just waited for it to get better on its own.
The current update is that I was supposed to get the nail a month ago but I developed an infection because I began skipping my bandage changes.. the doctors will not operate until the infection has cleared for at least a month.. so I'm now hoping to get it in the next 2 weeks.
Another thing that happened is that I was told by Dr. Barinov that I did not gain 8 CM as originally thought, because the clinic where I get the x-rays taken zooms in 10% and therefore I am likely 173CM. It's not a bad height, but far less than what I had came for.. so I am pretty upset about it.
I'm going to take this time to give everyone who is planning on doing external tibias some advice.
1. Do not listen to anyone that tells you that this is going to be easy or that it was easier for them than they expected. My mistake was that Mercusio (my LL mentor who I met with before the surgery and gave me advice based on his experience with LATN external tibias with Dr. Barinov) made it seem like it was a lot easier than it was, and I fell into the trap of taking the seriousness of stretching and walking for granted. Do not make this mistake. If you are lengthening, you NEED to stretch EVERY single day and you need to stand up and walk EVERY SINGLE DAY (granted you are doing external tibias and the doctor allows weight bearing). I will say that for him, it was in fact much easier and he was just giving me advice based on his own experience.
In the beginning, I did not stretch and I did not use the foot holder as much as I should have. If you are expecting to be babysat at this clinic, go elsewhere because they absolutely will not hover over you if you are not doing what you need to do. There is no physiotherapist services offered at this clinic and it is nearly impossible to find a physiotherapist that is familiar with this procedure in Volgograd.. believe me I tried for months and no one was able to find one for me.
The problem with this clinic is that you are left to do pretty much everything on your own, it is just simply the russian mentality. The doctors and nurses are good and they are helpful when you ask for help, but they are not like Western doctors - they will not come to you and they will not baby you. You need to be proactive and you need to be disciplined on your own.
They will show you what exercises you need to do, but you must ask them questions as they will assume that you are aware of what needs to be done. The benefit of this clinic, is that there are many patients who are doing lengthening that have had the experience and will guide you.. unfortunately, when I arrived at the clinic - almost everyone had just began lengthening..
2. USE THE FOOT HOLDER WHILE YOU ARE SLEEPING, AND FROM DAY ONE. This is probably the best advice I can give you. Your muscles do not want to be stressed and stretched because of the new bone length and they will resist the more you lengthen. You MUST push back against this resistance, and keep your muscles in the stretched position as long as you can everyday. It does not matter how uncomfortable it is to keep the foot holders on, they fking suck but if you want to lengthen without problems then you need to suck it up. I hated the foot holders and they were incredibly uncomfortable to sleep with, but my need to be comfortable and my laziness with the foot holders cost me lots of trouble, money and height.
3. Walk as much as you can, and do not lay in bed. The longer you remain inactive, the more difficult it becomes to walk. Push through the pain, and don't get discouraged because of how slow you're moving and how tired and bored you are of trying to walk down the hall. If you walk everyday for at least 2 hours minimum, you will recover much faster, walking will be much easier, you will feel less pain quicker and you will prevent ballerina much better. Walking is honestly, key and will get you to where you want to be. It only really sucks in the beginning and while you're lengthening, but it gets better really quickly if you keep at it.
4. This is not a vacation. You are not here to get girls, you are not here to experience Russia and you are not here to make friends. This is the best way to fk up. I got so caught up with girls while I was here, that I stopped paying attention to what I needed to do. I was trying to distract myself from things going on in my life, by trying to go out to restaurants, hang out with the correction girls and socialize with everyone else. It's okay to want to have these things, but focus on your daily goals and then when you have time reward yourself.. the correction girls have it really easy, they barely need to do anything other than walk and they're always bored so it's easy for them to want to distract you - don't get caught up in this, they don't mean any harm but they simply don't understand what you need to be doing.
5. Set goals and don't let a single day go by that you do not meet these goals. Track how much time you spent stretching and how much time you've spent walking.. you need to have a routine and you need to do this from day one, if you get lazy - everything can fall apart.
A lot of what I'm saying is pretty obvious and everyone reading it is probably thinking, they already know these things - but honestly planning for this surgery and then going through it are two completely different things. Anyone who read my journal from the beginning will know how much planning I did and how ready I was.. things fell apart pretty quickly.
Ballerina is no joke. It will happen to every single person that does limb lengthening, if they do not actively fight it. What we are doing is not natural, your muscles, nerves and tendons will resist the lengthening and if you want to achieve your goals then you need to do everything you can to prevent it. Once you get ballerina, it is really difficult to fix and it will set you back months if you don't fix it. IF YOU GET BALLERINA, STOP LENGTHENING AND FIX IT - THEN CONTINUE LENGTHENING. DO NOT TRY TO KEEP LENGTHENING AND THINK THAT YOU WILL SIMPLY FIX IT ONCE YOU'VE GOTTEN TO YOUR GOAL. This will not happen the way you think it will, it is FAR more difficult to fix ballerina than to prevent it. I should have been done this whole process in May of 2016... but I'm still here in October, not having achieved my goal and still waiting to go home because I thought that I could lengthen and then worry about my ballerina after.
I do want to point out that I am really young, much younger than most members on this forum.. and I've been the youngest person to come to this clinic within the last two years. I will say that I think a lot of the lack of real discipline and the carelessness probably had to do with my age... but for those who think that because they're still young that they won't have problems with flexibility.. trust me, you being young isn't going to make this a breeze for you.
I'm open to questions now, so you can post on this journal as you please.