Pursuit for beauty is like an insatiable aim. I wonder how some people are willing to suffer just to look beautiful in the eyes of others (they claim, it's for their own eyes, though). For me, it's like an inner insecurity that leads to many unimaginable sufferings.
Here in this entry, I'll let you discover a new type of gruesome plastic surgery people do to become taller. Unbelievable? This is real, really. It's called cosmetic limb lengthening or CLL. CLL is done in a few countries in the world, such as China, Egypt, Germany, Brazil and Ukraine.
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| CLL can make you at least two to three inches taller Photo by indianapublicmedia.org |
The details of the surgery, as you may imagine, are extremely painful. First, the doctor breaks the tibia and fibula, or the bones of the lower legs. Then, a device comprised of two metal rings are connected by extendable rods called the fixator, is screwed into both ends of the broken bone through the skin. After approximately a week, the stretching begins. The surgeon lengthen the fixator in small, 2 mm increments. This slowly pulls the broken bones apart, thus allowing new bones to grow and fill in the gap.
If nothing goes wrong, the 3 month bone-lengthening period is followed by another 3 to 6 months of bone strengthening. At this phase, the patient is confined to a wheelchair and must undergo physical therapy. Barring complications such as infection where the fixator is attached to the bones and nerve injury, you can be back up and walking around on newly lenghtened legs in about a year. Pheww...what a long way to go!
Ps: This reminds me of the bone-breaking process of the foot binding in China, so I'm flinching.
Pps: I've stopped growing taller at the age of 13.
