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[SpeedDialer]

Now at 50 clicks on both legs - that's 2.6mm + 6mm initial gap - crazy to think I am almost 1cm taller!

So far clicking has been fairly painless, just a dull ache in my legs that is unpleasant/distracting but not unbearable.

Congrats on finishing the first cm of your journey!

Something I'm curious about- is clicking harder for your right leg than the left?

With gnail, every patient I've talked to and myself also have noticed that the big click of the right leg is the hardest and most painful click by far (though often it is painless, not always). Based on Betz's official youtube videos though, it looks like clicking on betzbone 2.0 looks as if it is easier than gnail

[Growth.journey]

Congrats on finishing the first cm of your journey!

Something I'm curious about- is clicking harder for your right leg than the left?

With gnail, every patient I've talked to and myself also have noticed that the big click of the right leg is the hardest and most painful click by far (though often it is painless, not always). Based on Betz's official youtube videos though, it looks like clicking on betzbone 2.0 looks as if it is easier than gnail

It is the same for me with betz bone but could be a coincidence

[Vogel]

Vincent, have you talked to Dr. Becker about the alignment of your legs? I know that this is a  tricky thing about limb lengthening, which is not perfected by every doctor. Would be awesome if you can share his take on this subject.


Many commercial doctors can’t preserve the alignment of their patients which can cause issues down the line.

[lessthanavg8300]

Curious about this....what do you mean by alignment and how does LL change it?

[Vogel]

Curious about this....what do you mean by alignment and how does LL change it?

If I’m not mistaken, excessive lengthening or if  surgery is not done properly one could end up with bow legs or knock knees.

[Bagga]

it will result non-union issue beside bow leg or knee lock

[darthmaul]

So 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

You are such a influence!! Just one thing... I researched but didn't find anything about the click system. How does the system work?

[akali]

I don't know if its possible to have knock knees with femur lengthening... as far as I know, you can get knock knees with tibia lengthening and bowl leg with femur lengthening. It isn't like that?

[vincentfreeman]

So the last few months have been an absolute whirlwind, and I have had very little time or mental clarity to update this dairy.

 I returned to work pretty much 4-5 weeks after the surgery and the last few months flew by. Overall this has been a formative and singular life experience which hasn't felt completely real since the day of the operation. I feel like once I am done lengthening at some point it will hit me that I really did take this crazy step that I have contemplated for so long.

I am doing quite well, I honestly expected the surgery to be significantly more difficult in terms of pain levels, clicking, lack of mobility etc. but frankly my biggest issue has been forgetting that my bones are broken... and being a bit too careless constantly (walking without crutches, going up and down stairs quickly etc.). Back when I was in the rehab clinic I could see that I had far more mobility and flexibility than the other patients with a lot less pain either because I had extremely good flexibility to start with or simply because of my bone structure.

Because of my very high mobility I returned to a fairly normal, carless routine pretty quickly and this led to a minor complication (one of the screws bent, which is being fixed free of charge) which I will detail in my next few posts but nothing that led to too much set back.

I am nearly at 7cm now which is also hard to believe! everything looks normal on my x-ray, clicking technique was eventually perfected to become extremely painless (although I had a lot of trouble with my left leg for a while) and I am optimistic things won't deteriorate from here to my target. I am going to post a recap in more detail of the last few months in the coming weeks and some of the insight I learnt a long the way.

[Kanye Western]

So the last few months have been an absolute whirlwind, and I have had very little time or mental clarity to update this dairy.

 I returned to work pretty much 4-5 weeks after the surgery and the last few months flew by. Overall this has been a formative and singular life experience which hasn't felt completely real since the day of the operation. I feel like once I am done lengthening at some point it will hit me that I really did take this crazy step that I have contemplated for so long.

I am doing quite well, I honestly expected the surgery to be significantly more difficult in terms of pain levels, clicking, lack of mobility etc. but frankly my biggest issue has been forgetting that my bones are broken... and being a bit too careless constantly (walking without crutches, going up and down stairs quickly etc.). Back when I was in the rehab clinic I could see that I had far more mobility and flexibility than the other patients with a lot less pain either because I had extremely good flexibility to start with or simply because of my bone structure.

Because of my very high mobility I returned to a fairly normal, carless routine pretty quickly and this led to a minor complication (one of the screws bent, which is being fixed free of charge) which I will detail in my next few posts but nothing that led to too much set back.

I am nearly at 7cm now which is also hard to believe! everything looks normal on my x-ray, clicking technique was eventually perfected to become extremely painless (although I had a lot of trouble with my left leg for a while) and I am optimistic things won't deteriorate from here to my target. I am going to post a recap in more detail of the last few months in the coming weeks and some of the insight I learnt a long the way.

Why has it taken you this long just to reach 7cm?

[vincentfreeman]

Sorry that wasn't clear in my last post - I am at nearly *8cm* not 7 (1490 clicks so far) and that's not including the initial 6mm gap which would actually bring me to 8.3cm

I did lose about a week after the flight back as I got sick. Dr Becker also had me drop down to 14 clicks at around ~5cm, and then again to 12 clicks the other week. I think the idea is to keep lowering the amount of clicks as you approach target height.

I am going to try to put together a timeline recap of the last few months because a lot has happened since December

[we.live.once]

Sorry that wasn't clear in my last post - I am at nearly *8cm* not 7 (1490 clicks so far) and that's not including the initial 6mm gap which would actually bring me to 8.3cm

I did lose about a week after the flight back as I got sick. Dr Becker also had me drop down to 14 clicks at around ~5cm, and then again to 12 clicks the other week. I think the idea is to keep lowering the amount of clicks as you approach target height.

I am going to try to put together a timeline recap of the last few months because a lot has happened since December

so 1 click is 0.005mm?

[lessthanavg8300]

so 1 click is 0.005mm?

1 click is .052mm

[GreenAvocado]

Amazing 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!

[Werewolf]

Another classic ad becker's diary... all becker accounts are back together = apes together strong Folks, most people on this forum don't get surgery. You only believe those who upload pictures and videos. Also, most accounts are owned by the same person. The feature of dr becker diaries is the lack of pictures and videos lol Pay attention to the dr becker diaries, the same accounts are always texting each other's diaries. In this way, they increase their post level and advertise. Most people think they are real. They make a nice plot, but it's getting boring now. A new dr becker diary every week, and the same fake accounts always flooding that diary... No pictures, no videos..

[vincentfreeman]

dude it's just more effort to upload photos and videos and editing things out in a video for privacy. But I will start uploading pictures...

https://imgur.com/a/mCmw3NQ
Mmy initial X-rays from 25/11/2022

Rehab centre in freiburg
https://imgur.com/a/hCXWeeq

[Werewolf]

dude it's just more effort to upload photos and videos and editing out my face in a video for privacy. But I will start uploading pictures...

https://imgur.com/a/mCmw3NQ
Mmy initial X-rays from 25/11/2022

Rehab centre in freiburg
https://imgur.com/a/hCXWeeq

can I upload the x-ray and clinical picture and claim that I have surgery? No pictures of your legs? Prove it with your username.
just x-ray picture and clinical picture wow you had surger lmao

[vincentfreeman]

Nvm i just saw you troll basically half the diaries on here

But here's my username on the photo lmao 

https://imgur.com/a/dD7rZBB

[vincentfreeman]

Congrats on finishing the first cm of your journey!

Something I'm curious about- is clicking harder for your right leg than the left?

With gnail, every patient I've talked to and myself also have noticed that the big click of the right leg is the hardest and most painful click by far (though often it is painless, not always). Based on Betz's official youtube videos though, it looks like clicking on betzbone 2.0 looks as if it is easier than gnail

Initially the right leg was harder and the range needed to click it was a bit more than the left which would click easily after a few days though it became sort of the reverse particularly the out/un-click on my left leg would make a lot of noise and feel way more painful, not sure if it subsided eventually because it gets easier when you get past a certain number of cm's or if it came down to technique. Getting good at clicking was basically several factors:

1) Relaxing the muscle, because of the pain initially you grimace and without realising it tense the muscle which makes it very difficult to click. A big part of it is purely psychological. For example I stopped clicking when I got sick after my flight back home and really struggled to start clicking again, a lot of it was just psychological and thinking that there was something wrong, once you actually click you realise the pain isn't that bad and a lot of it is in your head, grimacing, feeling like it's impossible etc. once you start clicking again you realise how much of it was you tensing up and psychologically stopping yourself from clicking
2) Flexibility - stretching the buttocks and holding the click a bit further past the range of motion needed to click seems to reduce the pain over time
3) Technique - you eventually figure out an ideal technique, I notice the angle of my leg (i.e my hamstring relative to my calves) was too big, and if I kept it much closer to my calf I needed a much smaller range of motion to click. This was also different from my left leg to my right (right need a slightly bigger angle for minimal pain)
4) time - I can't tell whether this was the biggest factor or just the technique change, but everyone says after a certain number of cm the pain goes away/subsides significantly and clicking get's easier (usually around 4cm or so)


The other thing I did is splitting my clicking up into many small sessions through the day (e.g. 2 clicks every 2 hours or 3*5 instead of one big clicking session). From several research papers I read higher clicking frequency in smaller increments leads to better healing over all, and is much less painful. This may not work for you if you find the first click the hardest which was the case for me too in the beginning but once I had my clicking technique down the pain would actually increase as I did more clicks and the first came pretty easily so splitting it was both easy to do and made more sense from a healing standpoint

[vincentfreeman]

Amazing 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.

[vincentfreeman]

So 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.

[akali]

The rehab and the X-ray, both looks amazing! Are you still lengthening?

[sphenopetroclival]

If you have recent imaging data please put it at this thread. Redact any information that could be used to dox you.

[Mike G]

There seem to be mal-alignment of the right leg (at the left side of the x-ray).
How is that handled ?