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[speaknuh]

Dunno if anyone has been following stillyoung's Betz diary over the old forums, but the creepiest thing was when he stopped posting a few days after distraction, as he began outlining some of his slight concerns over the veracity of several old forum  posts. 

It came as a bit of a shock to me because he had stated many times before that he planned on writing through the entirety of his LL journey, surgery>distraction>consolidation>after.  He was a pretty regular poster, too- writing and replying to the thread quite frequently, at least a few times a week. 

Then all of a sudden he completely disappears.  He stops posting for a few months, and then as an increasing pile-up of "hey stillyoung we would like to have even the simplest 'hello I'm fine' response from you" posts we get a clever message from stillyoung: "Hello, I'm fine "

Grossly disconcerting.  Not only in its brevity after a few months of dead silence, tonally it's the kind a response akin to what Apotheosis would write.  stillyoung always struck me as being very formal in his writing, never trying to write something too clever or cheeky or whatever, always intent on thoroughly describing his present conditions as accurately as he could.  And suddenly he goes dark, and out of the blue tells us he's doing "fine "?

My question is, what really happened to stillyoung?

[Need2BTaller]

To be honest, I've always wondered why he may have stopped giving us recent updates pertaining to his recovery.  During his lengthening phase, him and I woild exchange back and forth with messages.   Soon after he stopped posting, I inquired about 3 messages, all of which has nevee been answered.  To make things more weird, under the activity log ins, I can see that stillyoung checks his messages.  His username would pop up often and would not make a single post.  TibandFemur was another good example of a great prospective diary owner who went AWOL due to some issue that was never properly addressed.  Only Betz patient I've contacted recently that are OldButGoldie and MasterHy, and so far they are currently having it rough.

[handy]

 

This is exactly what this topic and my posts today are talking about.  You would never read this information on old forum ...

http://www.limblengtheningforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg457#msg457

[ChrisIsaak]

Stillyoung gave me very long, detailed replies regarding his current status through the PM system. Unfortunately, since the PM system is disabled now, I have no access to what he wrote. Don't worry, he's fine. He's back in the States and back in academia, so he's really busy right now. He's recovering.

I am worried about TibandFemur, however. When I asked what went wrong with him, he replied something like "Let me email it to you, but please don't tell anyone." Then I promised that I wouldn't tell anyone. But I never got any other reply from him. I seriously hope he's okay.

[stillyoung]

Hey friends,

I have to admit I was both honored and amused to come across this thread. I doubt if I will ever update my old forum  diary again, and it's for a lot of different reasons. The biggest reason perhaps is that once something is posted, you give up your ownership of whatever you write and there will always be record of it somewhere. I wanted more than anything to document my journey, but at some point in time the risk of being "discovered" becomes greater than the incremental value of your next post. To be certain, I have written a few posts detailing my recovery, but I've kept them private up to this point, only sharing them through PMs with the intent that they're not posted.

Second, after the clicking phase of lengthening is over, it's a whole different journey. The daily routine stops and your body starts to recover. Needless to say, recovery is a lot less exciting than growing .1cm per day - the change is visible. During recovery, the changes are a lot more subtle - It's difficult to measure stiffness and flexibility (though they both return relatively quickly).

Third, it did get a bit cumbersome to continually receive messages asking the same questions that have already been covered extensively elsewhere on the forum. As this forum goes forward, I'd recommend setting up a wiki to relieve some of that burden.

Fourth, part of you wants to put LL in the back of your mind and get back to real life as soon as possible so you can leave this period of your life behind you. It's a great feeling to click for the last time, put on stockings for the last time, take your last Xarelto, and start to leave your crutches behind. With each one of these changes, you get closer and closer to becoming normal again, so there is not a lot of reason to actively go and immerse yourself in all things LL (that said, I still do log into old forum  pretty regularly, just to check on a few friends and read PMs).

Now, for the part you care about. I am doing well - and yes, I was intentionally a little snarky when I posted "Hi" on old forum  when someone asked about me. I'm around, albeit in the shadows.

To say I was concerned about my 11mm nail bending was an understatement. It was a large part of the reason I stopped lengthening at 6.5cm. In hindsight, I wouldn't have gone much further anyway...perhaps to 7cm max. I noticed on my x-rays at 5.1cm that one of my nails had started to bend and it was constantly on my mind from then on.

After I stopped lengthening, my flexibility and endurance came back pretty quickly - within a month and a half. Within about the same time frame, my duck ass was completely gone. The only annoyances were having to stretch out after sitting for extended periods of time and being on crutches.

My consolidation was (and has continued) to come along extremely well. However, because of my size and the slight bending of my nails, Dr. Betz kept me on crutches through my 4 month post-clicking x-rays because I even though I had enough callus formation on my left leg and the outside of my right leg, the callus still hadn't formed a bony bridge on the inside of my right leg. I was a little disheartened by that because every patient I'd read about - BadBoy, AndrewShizzles, betaller, etc. had all gotten off crutches by then, and I felt like I was strong enough.

Long story short is that I stopped walking with my crutches prematurely (without permission). I had waddled like a penguin for the first week or so, but by the end of the second week, I was able to walk fairly normally. Unfortunately, since I was walking up and down stairs and up to 2 miles a day, I bent one of my nails to the point that it was starting to break.

Alas, I had to fly back to Germany two weeks ago to have titaniums put in. It was a bit of a headache, but honestly, it's what I should have done immediately post-clicking given my reservations about the 11mm to begin with. I would recommend it for any male patient that receives 11mm nails in the future. It's just not worth the worry over nail bending to forego the titaniums. I ended up having to borrow the money from a friend, so I would tell anyone planning on LL in the future, to absolutely budget this in beforehand as a contingency.

Small roadbump all things considered, but I'm back to life walking without crutches (like a penguin for the next few weeks, I'm sure). I expect to be walking pretty close to normal in about 4 weeks' time, which will coincidentally be my 8-month anniversary of my op. Funny, it has seems like a lot longer when you're experiencing life as a (temporarily) handicapped person.

Last thing I'll say - there was a guy who walked into my room the day before I had my titanium op. He walked in normally and I had assumed he was there to have his operation. Turns out that he was actually there for nail removal after having lengthened 8cm two years earlier. I can't tell you how how encouraging it was to see someone finally at the end of their journey who appeared completely normal and healthy. I must've asked him questions for two hours straight about various muscle groups and sitting positions and everything else.

I know this message won't leave you fully satisfied, but I felt it necessary to give an update on my current status while addressing some of the concerns that I'd had about LL and providing some anecdotal evidence about someone that has seemed to make a full recovery.

I'll do my best to answer PMs here and on old forum , but time has been a precious commodity lately, so it may take a bit for me to respond.

sy

[Blackhawk]

Thanks for the update SY.

I'm glad to hear that you are doing well and hope that you are enjoying the new height!

[stillyoung]

Saw this morning that the post I made above had been copied and posted to the old forum  website. I requested SysOp remove the post on that forum.

I posted to respond directly to this thread but did not intend for it to be an update to my diary. I wish whoever reposted it had asked my permission first.

Keep up the good work on this board. Transparency and objectivity are the keys to your success.

[BilateralDamage]

SY,

Thank you for the update.  Everyone needs to move on with their lives after LL and it makes perfect sense for you to minimize your posting on old forum .  Heck, there's no point in posting once you've closed the LL chapter in your life.

Do you regret going with the Betzbone?  It seems ridiculous that everyone is bending their nails and having to pay extreme costs to replace them with titanium (You had a friend front you 17,500 euros!? ).  Do you wish instead you had gone with PRECICE 2 or maybe even a different intermedullary nail?

[speaknuh]

It's quite a relief hearing back from you stillyoung.  I fully understand your sentiments and completely respect your need for closure.

Also I'll concede I may have over-reacted to your few weeks/months of inactivity on old forum , though in my defense, my knowledge of LL came almost entirely from that site at the time.  When overwhelmingly suspect things were happening on old forum  a few months back, I would seek a form of consolation by reading your incredibly informative, clear and well written posts.  While the site was rife with some of the strangest behavior I felt I could always trust in your candid and entirely reasonable approach to LL.  Up until ChrisIsaak replied, your last post (the simple note that you were doing fine) had been throwing me off, especially in light of all the controversy surrounding old forum  at the time.  Glad to know it was you, and so good hearing from you.

Over the last few months I've done a full consultation, limblengtheningforum.com was created, and the whole fiasco over at old forum  was uncovered and publicly discussed on reddit and this site.  I'm still undecided whether I want to go under the knife for the sake of my height, my feelings are still contingent on height's perceived significance in relation to my everyday life as well as judging the outcome of doing what is currently quite a controversial surgery.  But at least now I've been given a level of reassurance that LL is an entirely legitimate practice that is conducted by some of the most experienced orthopedic surgeons in the world, and that the kinds of people who go through with it aren't completely insane.  I think the idea of building up an LL wiki is a good one.

I know this must sound crazy to you but from the perspective of someone whose understanding of LL came largely from a handful of websites (one of which strikingly provided the most information but seemed incredibly shady) it wasn't outside the furthest extent of reasoning for me to deduce LL was some major scam and that prospective patients' organs were being harvested and sold in some deep web market or something. 

Jokes aside, old forum  cast LL in a really bad light, enough that I was dissuaded from paying the flight ticket for a scheduled consultation visit with one of the doctors back in July.  Posters such as yourself gave me the assurance that LL is a completely legitimate and increasingly viable option for those interested in height gain.  It's great to hear from you, and your developments over the past months.  Really sorry to hear about the nail bend, the slow callus formation... nobody wants to spend more time than planned on crutches.  Glad to hear you are recovering well otherwise

[BullSurfer]

You guys actually care about people on the forum, cool, cool. I will be going on my LL journey soon. I'm one of those people tend to suffer alone. But this time I"ll make sure to share with you guys.