DIFM (and any other LL veteran) - as i read your diary, it sounded like you spent a lot of time in the pool, often up to 3 hours per day. What exactly did you do in the pool? Did you walk upright? Did you swim strokes? the reason I ask is I am literally at the Homewood Suite where I believe you stayed and the pool gets shallow...were you able to actually walk to the shallow end without fear of snapping the nail? I got in it for the first time today and was a little weary. I weigh 165lb
Thanks for any input
Mayor Mark
I walked forward, backwards, and side-by-side in the pool where the water was about up to my nipples. That's as shallow as I was allowed to go. I think the precice nail is stronger than 75 lb, and that they're just being overly cautious. Don't get so scared about breaking the nail. Worry more about getting flexible and stronger.
The 1 million dollar question is though, given your current physical and mental state post LL, would you still do it if you were able to go back to the day before surgery?
Or to be even more clear, are the stuff we tell each other and ourselves in the forum are anywhere near the truth? That with added height will come more respect, sociability, attention from women or whatever?
I can't answer the first question until the whole LL thing is finished. If my bone doesn't fully heal and I need a bone graft and the bone graft fails or some other bad stuff happens during rod removal, etc. then yea, I wouldn't have done it if I had the chance. If my legs do heal well and my rod removal is all fine and there's no permanent pain, then yes I'd do it again. I don't care that much about the diminished athletic ability, because my happiness or income doesn't depend on it. But I would probably not do this surgery if I enjoyed sports regularly. Would I do it again if I were 5'9" - such as doing tibias and adding more inches? Not really. If I were around 5'4"-5'6", I would. Crossing over that barrier between short and average height is a pretty good feeling. Being short sucks, as we all know or else we wouldn't be here in the forums. But being average in height isn't so bad. I don't feel any more discrimination or looks of disgust because of my height.
I'd say yes, there's a difference in respect and attention when your height is higher. But I think the most glaring difference is that a girl who used to be taller than you would now be willing to date you as opposed to not if you were shorter than her. That's about the biggest difference. I went back to see some of the girls who used to not like me because of my height, and they still did not like me. So height is not the definitive factor on whether a girl will like you or not. It's more like a part of a checklist and if height was the tipping point that made her not like you, then even if she liked you now now that you're taller, then your relationship is still very fragile. An analogy would be like if height were your physical education grade in school. But that's only one class out of the 10 classes you have to take. When you're short, you have a failing grade in that class. But if you fail in all other classes, then it doesn't matter that much if you get an A in physical education, because your overall grade is still a failure. Let's say that getting into college is like getting respect from girls and peers. So yes, if you're trying to get into college with a sports scholarship, then you'll be rejected immediately because of your physical education grade. They won't even care if all your other grades are A's. But there are also college who don't care about your PE grade, and you could fail that class all you want as long as your other grades are great. And then perhaps there's that rare chance that you barely made the cut off of the college just because your PE grade bumped up from the C to an A. But you're still at the bottom of the class at that college. That means that you'll have a lot of trouble at that college, because you're the worst student there. So my point is, improve yourself in all other areas first if you really want to see a big improvement in yourself. Otherwise you're just pouring a glass of water into a forest fire.
Some girls don't care about your height, too. Which explains why I've never really had a long gap in time when I didn't have a girlfriend. There's plenty of cute girls under 5'5". So don't ever do this surgery for a girl or for anyone's respect for that matter. They're not worth all the pain and money and time loss. Do it for yourself, because you're the only person worth doing this for. If your height is the only thing that's holding you back from loving yourself and losing all this time/money isn't going to affect you that much, then go ahead and do this surgery. That was the situation that I was in when I made this decision to do the surgery.
Seeing over crowds at concerts is also an added bonus.