Have questions you'd like to ask someone who had LL six years ago? Ask them here

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Hey MDOW. I had a few more questions about your LL experience that I felt like stopping by and asking. I think I'll ask them now, before I accumulate too many in my mind :

1. You mentioned that your legs now get more sore after long walks. Does this new soreness usually begin to occur during the walking or strictly afterwards?

2. Despite the soreness, are you still able to walk (and run) as quickly as you could pre-LL if you put forth enough effort? If so, can you maintain your pre-LL speeds for the same duration of time as you could pre-op?

3. How cautious must you be with your legs post-LL and recovery? Are there activities that you know you need to stay away from on account of having undergone LL?

4. Have you developed any psychological barriers that make you afraid of any activities, say running, jumping, skiing, etc? I know that personally, after once sustaining an upper body injury as a kid, whilst skateboarding, I have had a weird psychological block that prevents me from being comfortable or relaxed on a skateboard, even though I fully recovered from my injury and am, physically speaking, perfectly capable of using one again.

5. You mentioned that you do yoga. How was your balance affected by LL?

6. How long did you keep your IM nails in your legs for? How limiting were they to your day to day life? How did you explain to people that you couldn't run or take part in activities that were unsafe to do with the IM nail?

7. Are you still on familiar terms any people at all who knew you prior to LL, and somehow didn't find out about your surgery? If so, do they notice your new height? Do you tell them the truth of use a cover-up story? If its the latter, what is it?

8. Can you elaborate on the nature of your loss of agility (mentioned on page 1) and how it has (or hasn't) affected you?

Thanks so much for your answers. You are such an asset to this site and write very well. I hope you’re having an awesome weekend! Nice profile avatar BTW.

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Quote from: Tall on December 08, 2013, 05:07:05 AMHey MDOW. I had a few more questions about your LL experience that I felt like stopping by and asking. I think I'll ask them now, before I accumulate too many in my mind :

1. You mentioned that your legs now get more sore after long walks. Does this new soreness usually begin to occur during the walking or strictly afterwards?

2. Despite the soreness, are you still able to walk (and run) as quickly as you could pre-LL if you put forth enough effort? If so, can you maintain your pre-LL speeds for the same duration of time as you could pre-op?

3. How cautious must you be with your legs post-LL and recovery? Are there activities that you know you need to stay away from on account of having undergone LL?

4. Have you developed any psychological barriers that make you afraid of any activities, say running, jumping, skiing, etc? I know that personally, after once sustaining an upper body injury as a kid, whilst skateboarding, I have had a weird psychological block that prevents me from being comfortable or relaxed on a skateboard, even though I fully recovered from my injury and am, physically speaking, perfectly capable of using one again.

5. You mentioned that you do yoga. How was your balance affected by LL?

6. How long did you keep your IM nails in your legs for? How limiting were they to your day to day life? How did you explain to people that you couldn't run or take part in activities that were unsafe to do with the IM nail?

7. Are you still on familiar terms any people at all who knew you prior to LL, and somehow didn't find out about your surgery? If so, do they notice your new height? Do you tell them the truth of use a cover-up story? If its the latter, what is it?

8. Can you elaborate on the nature of your loss of agility (mentioned on page 1) and how it has (or hasn't) affected you?

Thanks so much for your answers. You are such an asset to this site and write very well. I hope you’re having an awesome weekend! Nice profile avatar BTW.

1.  It begins during the walks but goes away pretty quickly, actually.

2.  I'm able to walk as quickly as I could before as long as I take more steps.  My stride was actually shortened because of the tibia lengthening.  Femur lengthening will make your strides longer.  It's all about the ratios.  Running isn't affected since the stride is different.  I can still run quite fast at top speed, but I'm not sure if it's faster or slower as I could before.  I've never timed myself or figured out the MPH I could run either before or after surgery.

3.  I don't need to be cautious about any activities.  The bones are strong and I don't worry about breaking them any more than I would have before LL.

4.  I'm not sure if this was psychological or if there really was a physical component, but for 5 years after surgery I couldn't stand to have a blanket on my feet at night.  The weight of it on my feet bothered me so much.  I bought a blanket support like they had at the hospital and only recently stopped using it.

5.  Balance got quite a bit worse with the longer legs.  Getting taller without getting wider at the base, that's to be expected.  The Warrior 3 pose is especially difficult since you're balancing on one leg while holding up the other one.

6.  The IM nails were in my legs for 13 months after frame removal.  They weren't limiting.  I did weightlifting during the consolidation phase and even used a leg press machine with them in.  It took about a year for the bone to fully consolidate.  I often didn't notice them, and even ran a couple of times with them in.  I never ran marathons or anything like that in the first place, so having to tell people I couldn't do something because of the IM nails never came up.

7.  Yes!  There were a few people whose ears weren't reached by my mother's big mouth about the surgery.  They noticed I was taller and believed me when I told them I grew.  The younger you do the surgery the better, since that'll be a believable explanation.

8.  The loss of agility is really about having longer legs without the bigger muscles that would usually go with legs this long.  I just can't move them around as quickly as I used to be able to.  My kicks are especially slow and laborious.

Haha thanks for all the kind words.  I'm glad to help out potential LLers with all the info I know, so keep the questions coming if you have them.  That's not just directed toward Tall by the way, it's for everyone here.

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I noticed your signature now says you did LON. I thought the Guang Ji hospital only offered LATN, or at least gave LATN by default. How come you ended up getting LON? Was this their preferred method when you did your lengthening? Do you see any particular advantage to one method over the other? I have read that multiple LATN patients experience "bone popping", which is when the broken bone somehow pokes against inside of the skin, despite the frame which supposedly holds it in place. I guess LON would prevent this, but would make axial corrections more difficult, if not impossible. What are your thoughts?

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How long did it take to get back to normal after IMnail-removal?

Does your split knee tendon still hurt?

My knee tendon aches all the time.

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Quote from: Tall on December 19, 2013, 03:34:54 AMI noticed your signature now says you did LON. I thought the Guang Ji hospital only offered LATN, or at least gave LATN by default. How come you ended up getting LON? Was this their preferred method when you did your lengthening? Do you see any particular advantage to one method over the other? I have read that multiple LATN patients experience "bone popping", which is when the broken bone somehow pokes against inside of the skin, despite the frame which supposedly holds it in place. I guess LON would prevent this, but would make axial corrections more difficult, if not impossible. What are your thoughts?

Yes, LON was the default in 2007.  I don't see any significant advantages between LON/LATN.  When you put the nail in makes little difference.  I don't think it prevented corrections since it was only fixed on one side of the osteotomy cut and had a smaller diameter than a lengthening nail.  With internal lengtheners, corrections and lengthening are indeed separate surgeries/processes.  We had a guy who was going to do internals in the U.S. but came to Beijing because the correction he needed and lengthening he wanted could be done together faster.

Quote from: Sweden on December 19, 2013, 04:03:54 AMHow long did it take to get back to normal after IMnail-removal?

Does your split knee tendon still hurt?

My knee tendon aches all the time.

Just a few weeks.  I was almost back to normal with the nails in.

Yes my knees still hurt.  That'll forever be the legacy of that psychiatric snafu in Serbia, since I would've gotten external-only with Dr. Mitkovic otherwise.

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So I guess our knees will forever ache. 

Well that sucks for sure.....

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Quote from: Sweden on December 19, 2013, 06:17:55 AMSo I guess our knees will forever ache. 

Well that sucks for sure.....

No way to be sure if that will be the case, but seems like it's quite normal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intramedullary_rod

Quote"Long-term complications a patient may develop after the implantation of an intramedullary rod may include persistent or permanent knee pain (present in 73.2% of patients studied), atrophy of the calf muscle (27.3%), atrophy of the quadriceps (27.3%), and arthritis (35.4%).[5]"
It's kind of screwed up if LON/LATN patients aren't being informed of these stats beforehand (if the surgeon is aware of it, that is). 73.2% is the MAJORITY of patients.

Source study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18758282

QuoteCONCLUSIONS:

At a median 14 years after tibial nailing of isolated tibial fractures, patients' function is comparable to population norms, but objective and subjective evaluation shows persistent sequelae which are not insignificant. This study is the first to describe the long-term functional outcomes after tibial shaft fractures treated with intramedullary nailing nails. It may allow surgeons to better inform patients on the expected long-term function after intramedullary nailing of a tibia fracture. It may also prove useful when comparing intramedullary nailing nailing to other treatment techniques.

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I asked this in another thread but perhaps I should have asked this in this one:



I've got a question that I have been googling and havent been able to get a solid answer for.

My height is 155cm with an armspan of 158cm. If I were to follow Dr Franz's advice (which is to lengthen 5 (or 6?) cm in each part as a maximum), then I would be 165/167 cm with a 158cm armspan.


Would this be painfully obvious? Obviously not Apo level of obvious, but still very obvious?

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Quote from: old forum PartyLeaks on December 19, 2013, 07:46:01 AMNo way to be sure if that will be the case, but seems like it's quite normal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intramedullary_rod

It's kind of screwed up if LON/LATN patients aren't being informed of these stats beforehand (if the surgeon is aware of it, that is). 73.2% is the MAJORITY of patients.

Source study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18758282
Yeah, it sucks. But as long as I keep doing my kickboxing exercises, the knees don't feel that bad.  If there were no other way I'd still do it the way I did.

Quote from: inquisitivemind on December 19, 2013, 08:42:52 AMMy height is 155cm with an armspan of 158cm. If I were to follow Dr Franz's advice (which is to lengthen 5 (or 6?) cm in each part as a maximum), then I would be 165/167 cm with a 158cm armspan.

Would this be painfully obvious? Obviously not Apo level of obvious, but still very obvious?

I actually looked pretty goofy with my long arms and long neck before LL so I've never researched proportions that much.  After doing 3 inches my armspan and height are equal now.  On top of that, I think Apo doesn't look that bad, so I'm really not the guy to ask about proportions.

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MDoW,

How was your sex life affected after LL?  Did you have any problems with girls of certain heights or positions?  I ask because I'm a little worried how LL is going to affect my sex life with my gf!  She's already about 4 inches shorter than me and my plan is lengthen around 5 inches, so we'll have a real noticeable gap between us.  Did you notice any different between sex pre-LL and sex post-LL?