Quote from: GreenAvocado on April 03, 2023, 06:56:01 PMAmazing journal so far and your progress is inspiring. My surgery with Becker is on 5/10/23, very excited.
You mentioned you noticed you were more mobile / flexible than the other patients. What exercises / stretches stood out to you? Ideally, I'd like to see if I am as flexible as you! 
I met with Victor (C4L) and he mentioned I am very loose and limber, and should do fine. Another data point be great.
Looking forward to your timeline update brother!
I was extremely flexible before the surgery, I did 6 months of stretching to prepare for the surgery, but I think I had decent flexibility even before that since youth because of the stretching I did to do martial arts (taekwondo, later kickboxing). I could almost do front splits and side splits still, and most of the kicks from taekwondo fairly well so I am guessing this helped a lot. I think there is a also a genetic/luck components to it because there was one other patient who was 19 and had done a lot of stretching to prepare and he seemed to struggle a lot.
I don't know if there are any particular exercises that standout, you want to stretch 6 muscle groups basically (quads, hamstrings, hip flexor, hip adductor, buttocks, calves) and the TFL muscle + IT band (which is a ligament not a muscle). Judge the exercise by how good a stretch you can get out of it a lot of the exercises they gave us at the rehab centre didn't stretch the muscle very well for me so I modified them a little to get a slightly better stretch.
The muscle that were the tightest throughout lengthening were the quads, hip flexors, TFL and IT band. That's not to say you can neglect the other muscles, and ironically my left shin which seems otherwise unrelated is the area that gives me the most pain (muscle and nerve pain) now.
Once you actually have the surgery, it's good to have benchmarks for flexibility so you can observe reductions in your flexibility. I would basically check my flexibility benchmarks and if it had dropped a lot since clicking I would make sure to keep stretching until I could hit the "benchmark" (e.g. how close to touching your toes you are) and I basically made sure I didn't go to bed if possible until I had "maintained' the previous days mobility levels. It's a lot easier to lose mobility then regain it, so I have been pretty obsessive about this the last few months.
Beyond sheer flexibility, the ability to actually "relax" the muscle and not tense up is a huge aspect of pain management in clicking and yoga style exercises, meditation etc. help with this.
Once I got back I took TRT as well given opiates crush your natural testosterone levels (and consequently your estrogen which is key for bone consolidation). I have also recently started taking very low dose HGH (be very careful with this as it can cause early consolidation) which I think has helped with my recovery a lot.
Vincent Freeman - Femur Lengthening w Becker/Betz - Nov 2022
Quote from: SpeedDialer on November 27, 2022, 05:30:52 PMSo far have you found it best to take lyrica an hour or so before bed?
I've usually taken the lyrica uh lets see.. I guess in the morning if I am feeling stiff and sore. Or if I have physio, I take it 1-2 hours-ish before physio, but I haven't thought about the best time to take it
I haven't had sharp nerve pain in a while (used to get some nerve pain on my left lower leg shin oddly enough when I stretched my left hip flexors) but I'm assuming (not sure) that the lyrica helps for clicking and physio
I'm not exactly sure how nerves work and how a stretch of the hip flexors during femur lengthening could result in nerve pain in the lower leg shin but evidently this is a thing
I've sort of settled on taking my pain meds/lyrica either right before physio or at kind of random times, sometimes a bit before clicking
Curious if you did anything to improve the shin pain, I started getting this in the last few weeks (not when I stretch hip flexors, just when I walk in general). Stretching my calves more and trying to stretch the shin muscles a bit seems to help to an extent. It's not debilitating but it's odd and I don't want it to get worse.
The rehab and the X-ray, both looks amazing! Are you still lengthening?
If you have recent imaging data please put it at this thread. Redact any information that could be used to dox you.
There seem to be mal-alignment of the right leg (at the left side of the x-ray).
How is that handled ?
any updates here?
Becker is successor of Betz, go there guys
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