Height Before Surgery

Before the surgery, my height was quite short, not even reaching 150cm. Since elementary school, I was always number 1 in line by height, never even being number 2. Nevertheless, I lived well without much stress because of my height, but the problem started in college.

Every time I went to part-time job interviews, I couldn't help but think that I was being rejected because I looked too young due to my height. My face also looked young, so I always heard that I looked like a middle school student even after becoming an adult, and I started to worry about it little by little because of my height.

Decision to Have Surgery

After becoming an adult and realizing the importance of height, I wanted to be taller, and my mother first talked to me about the surgery and suggested I get a consultation. My mother was more worried and stressed about me being shorter than my younger sibling, so I reluctantly followed her to Korea University Guro Hospital.

While getting a consultation, Professor Song Hae-ryong showed us surgical patients and spoke sternly, which scared my mother, so we just got the consultation and left. Two years later, I had applied for a leave of absence to study, and suddenly my mother asked if I wanted to go to the hospital again, and I ended up scheduling the surgery date without even having time to think about it.

Surgical Process

While everyone had a hard time during the height surgery at the hospital, I often thought that I might be the one who suffered the most. Everyone probably thinks they had the hardest time, but in my case, the bone in my leg didn't regenerate well, and in the middle, my leg was filled with inflammation, so I had to have several more surgeries due to the inflammation, and the recovery, which was supposed to take about a year, is still not fully recovered even now, almost two years later.

I don't need crutches to walk, but my leg is still a bit uncomfortable to others, and I still limp if I don't walk with full attention. But I don't regret it. The surgery is already in the past, my height is taller and I look much better, and I feel more confident in my personality.

When I first entered the operating room, I didn't think anything, but seeing my worried mother, I pretended to be okay and went in. Actually, I was very nervous, but I didn't know anything, so I just went in and came out.

It was my first surgery, and it took 8 hours, so I remember shivering as soon as I came out because I was so cold. At first, I thought it was always that hard after surgery, but later I realized that the longer the surgery, the harder it is. Anyway, after the surgery, I hardly remember anything for about 3-4 days.

The pain control given at the hospital didn't suit me, so I kept throwing up, and since I wasn't getting pain control, my leg hurt, so I only remember suffering a lot. And I remember frowning when I took off the bandages because they were so gruesome. My legs were originally thick, but they were so swollen like radishes, and there was disinfectant all over the place. I actually took pictures of this, so I remember it, otherwise I wouldn't have remembered it.

Then I remember being told to stand up on the 4th day. At first, I barely managed to get into a wheelchair. I couldn't stand up properly, and I was in so much pain that I didn't have the strength in my legs, and I just kept crying alone in secret because it hurt. I was so irritable back then, and looking back now, I was so sorry to my parents. While lengthening my legs like that, I didn't even have the tiptoe surgery that everyone else does, and my condition was pretty good.

Inflammation

I thought I would pass the second pin fixation surgery without any problems, but it was about a week after the second pin fixation surgery. Suddenly, my whole body felt like I had the flu, I was so cold, my fever rose to almost 40 degrees, and my leg hurt so much that I cried even when I went to the bathroom for a short time. I lived with my family at home, but everyone was busy and I was always alone at home, but there wasn't much difficulty in living alone, but when I was sick and no one was there, I didn't know what to do, so I suffered alone for about 2-3 days. I covered myself with a blanket because I was cold, but I later found out that I had made the illness worse.

I didn't know I had inflammation and thought it was just the flu, so I made the inflammation worse. My leg hurt so much that even if I moved it a little, I called an ambulance and was taken to the hospital. As soon as the professor saw me at the hospital, he cut open my skin and squeezed out the pus. I really wanted to faint at this time. I hadn't eaten for 3 days because I was in pain, so my stomach was almost empty, so I ate a persimmon, but I couldn't have surgery right away because I had eaten a persimmon.

So I trembled and endured the pain, and finally had surgery at night. When I came out of the operating room, there were 4 tubes in my leg to wash out the inflammation with saline. I kept washing out the inflammation with saline. Even though I was getting strong antibiotics, the inflammation would go down and then go up again repeatedly. I couldn't move with the tubes connected like that and spent 2 weeks lying still in bed.

And then I was discharged from the hospital, but I felt the symptoms of inflammation again. I hurriedly went to the hospital this time without wrapping myself in blankets. Then the professor said that the internal fixation seemed to be causing the inflammation, so he suggested removing the internal fixation. I didn't want to remove the internal fixation because it would lengthen the period, but I had no choice but to remove it.

I heard later that the internal fixation pin was full of pus. I thought it would have been better if I had removed it from the beginning. And then, around the 9th month, I removed the external fixation on the other leg, not the leg with the inflammation. He said that the leg with the internal fixation removed was still weak, so I couldn't remove the external fixation.

Reoperation

And then, after about a year, I had to go back to school, so I removed the remaining external fixation. When I removed the external fixation and walked with a brace, my bone bent because there was no internal fixation. It was so bent that I started to worry about what to do. When I went to the hospital and got it checked, the bone was completely misaligned in the middle. I couldn't think of any other way, so I told the professor that I wanted to have a reoperation. I originally thought that the Ilizarov was a surgery to correct bowlegs, so I made up my mind and told him that I wanted to have a reoperation, and he agreed, so I had a reoperation.

Since I only had the Ilizarov on the right side, my pelvis hurt a little because the way I walked on both sides was different, but there was no big problem. After the reoperation, I often had minor inflammation, so I took some antibiotics, but fortunately, there was no major inflammation.

I thought it would take about 2 months, but the bone didn't regenerate well, so I mixed artificial bone and my own blood and put it in. I was a little worried about putting in artificial bone at first, but it worked so well that the bone regenerated quickly after putting in the artificial bone. I removed the external fixation after 4 months, and at first I couldn't walk well, so I worried for a long time, but I exercised hard, and now it's been about 2-3 months since I removed the external fixation, and I've improved a lot more than I thought. Now I don't limp severely and I walk.

I was so exhausted after the reoperation that I didn't exercise well, so my knee didn't straighten well, so I belatedly went to a local hospital for physical therapy, and I saw that I was improving quickly after going to physical therapy.

Finally

It was so hard when I was suffering back then, and I almost regretted it, but I'm originally the type of person who doesn't regret things, so I'm satisfied now. My height has also increased a lot, and I've increased it by about 9 centimeters, so I'm almost 160cm now, and I wondered if people would know if I grew this much, but people don't really know unless I tell them first. They just think, "Did her height increase? I guess she got taller?" More than worrying about what others think, I think it's self-satisfaction. After all the hard work is over, I go out more often now, and I'm satisfied because I notice more people who are shorter than me than before. If I could go back to the past and have the surgery again, I would do it again, but I would take good care of the inflammation.