Day 24
I haven't updated for a few days since nothing worth mentioning happened. Today I had my 3 week follow up. It went very well. Dr. M said I had very good bone growth. I could see the bone callus in the X-ray as a cloudy area between the 2 broken sections of the bone. He told me go back to lengthening 4x per day for 5 days, and then return to 3x a day.
I also met LAGrowin today at Dr. M's office. It was great to chat in person with someone going through the same ordeal. We saw about 2 or 3 other LL patients in there as well.
I did not receive any copies of my X-rays. Maybe some of you other patients or vets can tell me how you got pictures of your X-rays? are you asking the Dr's office to email you the image or are you just taking a picture with your phone?
Short2tall internal femurs with Dr. Mahboubian
Quote from: short2tall on March 23, 2018, 11:12:05 PMDay 24
I haven't updated for a few days since nothing worth mentioning happened. Today I had my 3 week follow up. It went very well. Dr. M said I had very good bone growth. I could see the bone callus in the X-ray as a cloudy area between the 2 broken sections of the bone. He told me go back to lengthening 4x per day for 5 days, and then return to 3x a day.
I also met LAGrowin today at Dr. M's office. It was great to chat in person with someone going through the same ordeal. We saw about 2 or 3 other LL patients in there as well.
I did not receive any copies of my X-rays. Maybe some of you other patients or vets can tell me how you got pictures of your X-rays? are you asking the Dr's office to email you the image or are you just taking a picture with your phone?
That feeling you get when seeing new bone forming is really nice knowing everything is going good and your growing! Keep it going.
Whenever i went to get xrays i simply asked the radiologist to make me a cd of the xrays. I had to wait a day and come back to get the cd and then i would come home put it in my labtop and upload it to imgur. Then you just copy the link and paste it on here.
Quote from: short2tall on March 23, 2018, 11:12:05 PMDay 24
I also met LAGrowin today at Dr. M's office. It was great to chat in person with someone going through the same ordeal. We saw about 2 or 3 other LL patients in there as well.
It was great to meet you short2tall, share experiences as well. Very happy to hear that everything went well with your visit.
If you weren't in a wheelchair, I would have never guessed you did something so tough as LL. I still look the part of someone who is going through 'something'! Glad you've handled it so well.
I think I also caught a glimpse of Optimistic1 leaving the office, but wasn't able to say hello in person. There was also another younger girl who looks to have just done tibias. She looked like a recent surgery patient.
Continued success with your journey short2tall.
Quote from: Jim_dabarber on March 24, 2018, 01:22:55 PMThat feeling you get when seeing new bone forming is really nice knowing everything is going good and your growing! Keep it going.
Whenever i went to get xrays i simply asked the radiologist to make me a cd of the xrays. I had to wait a day and come back to get the cd and then i would come home put it in my labtop and upload it to imgur. Then you just copy the link and paste it on here.
Thanks Jim! I'll try that next time.
Quote from: LAGrowin on March 25, 2018, 02:07:03 AMIt was great to meet you short2tall, share experiences as well. Very happy to hear that everything went well with your visit.
If you weren't in a wheelchair, I would have never guessed you did something so tough as LL. I still look the part of someone who is going through 'something'! Glad you've handled it so well.
I think I also caught a glimpse of Optimistic1 leaving the office, but wasn't able to say hello in person. There was also another younger girl who looks to have just done tibias. She looked like a recent surgery patient.
Continued success with your journey short2tall.
Haha thanks for the compliment LAGrowin. You didn't look that rough, lol, you seem to be doing really well also. Hopefully things continue to go smoothly for us, and all of the other patients currently undergoing LL.
Hi Short2tall and LAGrowin,
I was there for my femurs first post-op appointment yesterday in the morning (March 23, 2018) and I was actually the first one there but waited until around 10:00 or 10:30 am before being called in for my x-ray. When I came out after meeting with Dr. M, I saw the room was filled with patients. If any of you stopped me to say hi I'd have started a conversation as I know it's quite difficult for us to meet each other in person. I don't think I was able to recognize Short2fall but LAGrowin is one handsome man.
I was rushing out after the appointment as I didn't want anyone to see my face after many sleepless nights dealing with pain and suffering while going through this process. I take pride in my hair but I cut it real short and stopped combing it since my first surgery about 5 weeks ago. You guys are tough. You make going through this process easier than it really is. Good luck and continue to keep us posted.
Quote from: Optimistic1 on March 25, 2018, 06:42:30 AMHi Short2tall and LAGrowin,
I was there for my femurs first post-op appointment yesterday in the morning (March 23, 2018) and I was actually the first one there but waited until around 10:00 or 10:30 am before being called in for my x-ray. When I came out after meeting with Dr. M, I saw the room was filled with patients. If any of you stopped me to say hi I'd have started a conversation as I know it's quite difficult for us to meet each other in person. I don't think I was able to recognize Short2fall but LAGrowin is one handsome man.
I was rushing out after the appointment as I didn't want anyone to see my face after many sleepless nights dealing with pain and suffering while going through this process. I take pride in my hair but I cut it real short and stopped combing it since my first surgery about 5 weeks ago. You guys are tough. You make going through this process easier than it really is. Good luck and continue to keep us posted.
Hey Optimistic1, I'm glad to hear your femur surgery went well. Hopefully you will have good bone growth from the start this time.
Day 25
Yesterday I started lengthening 4x per day again. I can definitely feel an increase in muscle tightness already. I had a tough time sleeping last night because of it. The discomfort goes away once I take a Norco, but I'm trying to take as few as possible. The Flexeril (cyclobenzaprine, 10mg) doesn't seem to do much for me. Once I get out of bed and move around I feel completely fine again.
However, I did make some good progress in PT today. My therapist has me doing more and more strength exercises with resistance bands, and it's really helping. I also improved quite a bit in my knee bends, or heel to butt stretch, which was my worst area before. I achieved about 120 degrees today.
Day 28
Today is my last day of lengthening 4x a day, and I'll go back to 3x a day tomorrow. I'm pretty happy about this, because my IT bands have started to get tight. Dr. M did release them, I believe he does this on about 99% of his patients, so I didn't expect them to be getting tight already. Hopefully going back to 3x per day will give them a break. I'm doing PT every other day and it certainly helps, but there really isn't a whole lot you can do to stretch your IT bands, they are quite rigid and don't stretch like muscles do. Anyway, we will see what happens.
Day 30
I thought I would give an update for those of you that are concerned about working out and maintaining your upper body strength while lengthening. This was one of my main concerns going into this process, but I've actually been able to work out since about 2 weeks post-op. Of course my workouts are pretty limited, due to lack of serious equipment, but I think I've been able to keep maybe 80-90% percent of my strength thus far. If I can maintain this throughout the rest of the lengthening phase I'll be very happy.
If you have access to a hotel or apartment gym, or can even wheel yourself over to an actual gym, you will be able to use pin-loaded machines and cable machines and get a really good workout in. However, I am limited to a weight bench with a variety of dumbbells, resistance bands, and a door frame pull-up bar. Today for example, I did chest and triceps. I started with dumbbell flies on a flat bench. Then I did dumbbell presses on the flat bench. One of the most difficult parts is picking up heavier dumbbells from the floor without using your legs to stabilize yourself. That being said, I only feel comfortable lifting 55 or 60 lb dumbbells without losing my balance. That isn't enough for me to do chest presses, so I will also wrap a resistance band under the bench and hold it in each hand while I grip the dumbbells, and then swing them up one at a time before laying down. This allows me to get a pretty good pump. Then I did both of these exercises with the bench in an incline position. After that I transferred myself onto the floor and did push ups for the first time since the surgery. It didn't hurt at all. Then I did dips on my walker. They look flimsy but they can support 350 lbs (also mine doesn't have wheels). Just be very careful you don't lose your grip, or expend too much energy to where you can't stand up after the last rep. Lastly, I laid back down on the bench and did tricep extensions with a dumbbell.
I have PT every other day, which is quite a workout for the lower body in itself, so I work my upper body on all of the days that I don't have PT. I have 3 different upper body workout routines that I do. Chest and triceps (described above), back and biceps, and shoulders. For back and biceps, I start with seated curls. Then I set the bench to about a 45 degree incline, and do curls in which I rotate the dumbbells about halfway up. I am also still trying to find a comfortable way to do concentration curls without resting my elbow on my broken femurs. Then I switch to back, and my go-to exercise here is pull-ups on my perfect pull-up bar. I do wide, narrow, and hammer grip. I think I am going to attempt some dumbbell rows if I can get myself to lay face forward on the incline bench.
My third muscle group that I work out is shoulders. This is probably the easiest workout to do solely with dumbbells, but I also consider it the most important to look proportional after LL. I think wide shoulders are the best way to not look too skinny after gaining 2 or 3 inches. I start with side raises to hit the medial delts. Then I do front raises, which can be a little difficult because of the natural tendency to try and support yourself with your legs. Next I do Arnold presses, which is where you start with the dumbbells down by your chest, palms facing inward and then you rotate as you press upward. Then I typically do more front and side raises, and I finish up with regular shoulder presses. I normally would start the workout with the heavy shoulder presses, but since I can't go really heavy I like to be slightly tired out before this exercise.
That sums up my workout routine for now, just thought I would share it in case anyone had the same concerns that I did.
Dips on the walker... Nice!
Sounds like you're getting a good workout considering the circumstances. Thanks for the tips.
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