I am going to write this thread day by day. After being quiet for exactly a year I have decided to expose all the pain and suffering I had gone through till date and the bag of lies this Iranian tells his patients and hopefully with the help of other patients I am going to post all their sufferings and XRays. I have shocking XRays for others to view but I dont know how to post them here. If someone can point out I will be posting them.
Ok I will write a detailed diary later. But in essence this is what happened to me:
* I had severe height neurosis and did improper research on LL. I decided to go to Iran and get LON surgery done on tibias for 4-5 cms.
* Had two surgeries in Iran and gained about 3.8-3.9 cm.
* When I came back to US, one of the screws on the right leg was protruding outside of the leg.
* I was not able to walk at all. I was on crutches forever.
* About few weeks later local doctor pointed out broken nail on the right leg and by this time it was clear there was no bone growth on the left leg at all.
* In a state of shock I mailed this moron, and his reply was ---> 'leg will correct itself'.
* I stopped trusting him anymore and started mailing US doctors. I got exactly same answer from Dr Rozbruch, Dr Fragomen of HSS NYC, Dr Paley of Baltimore , Dr Catagni of Italy and an orthopaedic here in my city.
* The conclusion was I had malunion on the right leg with loss of length and possible infection. I had nonunion with severe valgus deformity and loss of length on the left leg.
* I immediately went in for a consultation with Dr Rozbruch and Dr Fragomen of HSS.
* Well what happened after that I can summarize in my diary. Essentially I had two more surgeries paying them out of pocket and still suffering from huge bills and removing the lengths and straightening the legs.
* I am not yet out of woods. But making progress.
Well both were due to his mistakes in surgery. Non union was caused by instability of the rod. Dr Fragomen and my local orthopaedian demonstrated that by moving my leg and showing the movement centered on one of the screws. I pretty much knew that something was moving inside in the left leg while I was walking (on crutches). Anyways I am not his worst case. Every patient under him suffered. Later I shall summarize his 'skills'
* He used video shots of my progress in Iran in an Iranian TV without even mentioning him. While I was suffering from all these here in US, he was giving interviews in Iranian TV that he gets US patients regularly and they are doing extremely well. (I was his only international patient at that time and I was suffering to the core) (Maybe he gave the interview just after I left Iran -- in the first couple of weeks). In any case I had mentioned him about my privacy and he still used the images for his benefit.
* Before I went to Iran I asked him repeatedly if he had any complication. He repeatedly lied saying he used to have complications in the first two years of his practice and he has made steady progress since then. In reality when I had my legs operated I met with his patients and no one was without issues. One of my fellow patient had to redo the first surgery because the device was attached wrongly and he was under intense pain during lengthening. The girl next door (not a cosmetic LL patient) went through 4 surgeries and destroyed her life totally. Now she has been mailing me regularly about my US doctor. There was a little girl from Boston (of Iranian origin but she lives in Boston) undergoing LL. If only the board members see her images they will never visit this board again. She almost died of infection and another surgeon had to treat her to get her well. Anyways I am going to organize this diary and expose this moron.
These are the events from a girl's LL experience. She used to stay next to my room in Tehran. (She lives in Singapore).
I have indicated all the mistakes done by this moron by (^^^)
* She had a car accident 1.5 years (when I met her). and broke her left thigh bone. She had a surgery and they internally fixated her thigh bone.
* She developed infection in the surgery spot and didnt take proper care of it.
* She had a subsequent surgery where they tried to remove and replace her internal rod I guess. ( I dont know the exact detail of the second surgery).
* Her infections continued even after the second surgery. At this point she started talking to doctors all around the world - including Dr Paley, Motallabe and doctors from Singapore.
* Pretty much everyone confirmed that she had deep infection in her thigh bone.
* She decides to get it fixed through Motallabe.
* Motallabe claims that the infection has affected 6-7 cm of bone and he needs to remove 10cm of her bone and externall fix the bone and do lengthening for the amount of bone removed and then limb lengthened and internall fixated. Well I am not an expert but I have the following
questions about this procedure.
- Why would he remove 10cm when only 6-7 cm is infected? Maybe it is difficult to remove exactly so you remove safely a bit more. But then 3cm of healthy
bone has to be removed. That is questionable.
- And why would he need to do lengthening. Lengthening is only when you want to extend soft tissue. Here the soft tissue is already there.
In any case,
* (^^^) She had her bone removed and external fixation was done on her. After few days her apparatus was not lengthening. So she goes into surgery again and get the problem resolved.
* His initial quote was the lengthening would start 5th day post op and for about 100 days (1mm a day). But she had already lost some time due to the failure of the apparatus and the second surgery.
She started lengthening about a mm day. She was already there for almost 2 months when I had my first surgery and moved to a room next to her. We were having XRays every second friday or so. Her lengthening was going fine. But the amount of lengthening was a cause of concern.
She would note down how much she lengthened and it didnt add up in the XRays. Motallabe had told us that the first week or so the lengthening is lesser than expected but it goes fine from the next few weeks. So she ignored this fact.
* Obviously her right leg was lot longer than the left. They get around this issue by giving her a thicker left slipper. And she hardly walked fine even on walker. I find it hard to imagine. I mean she walked worse than someone like me who had both legs operated. I would expect her to freely move around with one leg and just use crutches or something.
* The left leg slowly got closer to the floor. When I was done with my lengthening and itching to get the externals removed, she was still doing lengthening. And she had plenty of pain in the nights due to lengthening. I remember her crying late in the night. (Eventually disturbing everyone else). They had some kind of instrument which circulates electricity around your muscles and it is supposed to comfort you.
You have to ask her if it really alleviated her pain.
* (^^^) In the final days of my stay in Tehran, she started complaining that how much ever lengthening is done it doesnt reflect in the xrays. And most importantly she suspected that the doctor
must have removed more than 10cm. More or less about 12cm.
* (^^^) After about 1.5 months after I left, she went into surgery room for the removal of external devices. When she woke up after few hours, she was in ICU.And the nurse told her she will be having repeat surgery the next morning.
Put yourself in this situation. You wake up expecting the worst is over and you are in ICU with all devices attached to you. She apparently had several complications during surgery. Her exact words are - 'Motallabe couldnt preserve length during internal fixation and he messed up during
the nail exchange'. Let me explain what that is - Usually in LON surgeries they fix the external device and also put the internal nail during the first surgery. During second surgery if the lengthening was done for a huge amount they swap the internal nail and put a longer one and fix it.
* (^^^) She stayed in her room for furthur one month before getting back to Singapore. She never walked again up until now and she has been on walker. She has never been happy.
* (^^^) Having reached Singapore, she realized her left leg is shorter than the right by more than 3cm. But that is not even her worst worry. She has been taking regular xrays and the bone growth is partly good and in certain areas shows sign of delayed or non-union.
* (^^^) But the biggest disaster was that she found some discharge about a month back coming from the top portion of the screw site.
* She has been only on walker and she is trying to consult with Dr Paley or someone here in US. But obviously being from a different country, it is harder get treatment here.
* (^^^) All this while Mr Motallabe has been lying to me that this girl is shaping up well and planning to return to Iran for nail removal. Pity, Little does he know that I talk to her directly. Even when I was suffering he asked me not to share the information with other patients.
ANd they might lose hope.
* I have her Xrays (She sent me to give it to my doctor here in US and get his opinion). I am going to post all his 'surgical skills' on the web.
Boston girl (Cosmetic lengthening)
* This little Boston girl is of Iranian origin (She must be 15 or 16). I would say she is about 4 11 or so. Her mom was about 5 7 - 5 8 which is surprising. Her mom was worried
about the short stature of her daughter and brought her all the way from Boston to stay in Tehran for a year and lengthen 6-7 cm. I first met her in the Physiotherapy room.Never have I seen her walk even on walker.
She was assigned to a physiotherapist by name Amiri. And he used to carry her around in his hands during PT. She used to struggle even on exercise bikes. She couldnt handle the lengthening pain. After lengthening about 6 or 7cm (I dont remember exact amount) she had ultra thin legs. So her external was not going to be removed immediately.
They were trying to get her do a lot of PT before removing externals.
* (^^^) After I left, her externals were removed. But she was sick after the surgery and she had severe infection too. I was told that she was close to death.
* Her mom started accusing Motallabe for this state. She did everything he asked him to do. But her girl was suffering in the end.
* Her mom took her to another ortho in Tehran and he started treating her. And her infection resided (from what I heard in March/April of this year). I dont know if they closed the gap or anything. I will get furthur info and update this case.
She was one of the biggest sufferers. Maybe she was too young to handle this. Being a girl I would challenge her mom's decision to get LL done. There are plenty of short guys who would have treated her well. I mean its just a wrong decision.
Iranian girl with knee problems (Cosmetic LL)
This girl is a dwarf. She lengthened about 6 or so cms. She was very bold. When we used to suffer on walkers she was always in crutches. Her reasoning was that, it helps in correct posture and helps you avoid loss of back muscles during lengthening.
When I met her in PT she had completed lengthening by then. She used to be regular in PT. She did mention about the difficulty during lengthening.
* (^^^) During PT, they were doing a strange therapy. They used to put several lbs of (or kgs in their measurement) weight on the knee. The reason was, the knee was bent.
That is when she lies down and stretches her legs, the lower leg would form an angle with respect to the floor. We are talking about obscene amount of angulation here.
* I cant logically reason out why would this happen at that point. It used to partially get reduced when you put weights on your knee for certain amount of time.
* She had her externals removed and internally fixated. She struggled to walk. I learnt that she developed knee problems (we are talking about extremes of pain) and started
consulting with other orthos and found out from her XRays that the nails are bent. Your knees should be the center of weight bearing between the hip and the ankles. But the center of weight falls way outside of her knee.
* (^^^) When she confronted Motallabe he said that the bent nails are to make her leg look straight. I want to add something here. He did this to me and to another patient called Majid. I mean he doesnt even understand the purpose of knees in your body.
Every lower leg has some curvature. You can observe people in gym. All regular people will have some curvature and he puts this bent rods in our legs claiming he wants to straighten them.
* (^^^) The externals used by him are from WW2 era. They are just simple rigid devices with bicycle spokes like strings. When I was in HSS first time I saw how the correct devices should look like. They have a complex device and they compensate for the curvature during lengthening and all graded lengthening screws. It means exact amount of lengthening in proper 3D fashion.
* This girl apparently had complete union. But whats the point, her legs are of no use.
Majid Cosmetic LL patient
He was certainly the most interesting character I met there. He was about 5 4 and trying to get 8cm. But he stopped at 7 or so. He used to do 4-5 hrs of PT per day. And he was a machine. Being so tiny I dont know
how he manages gather so much energy. He was lengthening slowly (less than 0.5mm a day) but making slow and steady progress. He claimed that bone had already healed for about 1cm. I cant quiet understand what he meant that time. Because the bone
growth is not like a slow progression from one end to another. You would start seeing callous formation 6weeks to 12 weeks after any orthopaedic surgery and it starts densifying all around. Its not even like a cylindrical growth. It just tends to fill in all over the place around any fracture site.
He was very positive and hailed Motallabe as a risk taker and one who understands patients and he used to make mistakes but had matured over the years. You dont even want to talk to him about Motallabe now. I guess it took him some time to realize what a poisonous SOB this guy is.
* He did lengthening for about 120 days or so and ended up with just over 7cm of gain. He had his second surgery during which the internal nails were fixated.
* (^^^) After couple of days of second surgery one of his screw was seen outside the body. He had to get another surgery done suturing that site.
* (^^^) After a week, while he was in PT room his right nail broke. And his knee couldnt move. He had another surgery the next morning where they swapped his right nail.
This was his fourth overall surgery and third in very very short duration. He said he was physically so tired by this surgery and he suffered recuperating form this.
* I got this news a little later. I hadnt been talking to him for a month or so.
* (^^^) After 2 more months, his left nail also broke. He had another surgery and swapped the left nail.At this point he told me that he is not at all well. (Of course I was having my issues parallely about which you will read in my diary).
* (^^^) In his last mail, he told me that his legs are still bent (just the like that girl in the above post).He did everything Motallabe asked him to do and more in terms of PT. He was planning to sue Motallabe for all the bag of lies. He asked me to send him all my hospital bills so they can be covered.
* (^^^) He didnt have good bone growth (until now).
I slowly lost appetite and lost a lot of weight. When I returned to US I weighed only 110lbs that was a loss of nearly 30lbs. And I measured my weight well after 3 weeks after coming to US. In the mean time here in US I was eating well. So i might have lost more than 30lbs. Yes you heard me right.
My legs became thinner and thinner until only bone and skin were left near the thigh and the lower legs. I found it harder to get up and get around. You had to clean the pins twice a day and keep them covered. I had so much pain while taking even a single step. The pins going into the legs were piercing my flesh. That is a sign that the apparatus is failing. I learnt
about it only later on. All the time if I complain to Dr or Mrs Rahimi they never bothered to attend it. They used to say there was a guy called Tommy and he used to do so well. Shut up bitch. I am telling you about a problem and attend to it. Let me tell about Mrs Rahimi. She was the right hand of the doctor. She was so nice to me the first day I was in Iran. But after the
surgery I realized her true self. She will promise to come at certain hours for physiotherapy and patient care and she wouldnt turn up. Dr submits all money for our stay and care to her. But she always used to neglect us. The maid used to complain that Mrs Rahimi didnt leave him any money to bring dinner or anything.
I had to starve starting week 3. I wanted to use my dollars but the maid had no idea how to use it. Life was increasingly harder from week 3/4 once the HOLY MONTH started. People around you wouldnt eat anything until 6pm. I mean how can you do LL without consuming food. In fact you are supposed to eat a lot.
My appetite also became less and less. It is very hard to get sleep. You would be so tired and exhausted but the pain and discomfort wouldnt let you sleep. I started taking increased dose of antibiotics and pain killers. I called my parents and friends and pretended to be holidaying in Europe. I repeatedly lied to them. In the nights my life was a hell. I cried for the first time in so many years. I used to think if only my parents didnt conceive me I wouldnt be feeling that way. But slowly over the last year I have realized how much my parents love me.
Being short is not a sin and not something to be ashamed/felt bad about. Honestly if you are a dwarf yes this surgery is for you. If you are short (5 4+) you are still medically perfect.
Sometime during third week I fell down in the restroom. I used to pull onto the side bar while getting up. And it failed once. I fell down and hurt myself. Hearing the thunderous sound that girl's brother came out for help. Overall Iranians are kind hearted. Unfortunately except for Dr & Mrs Rahimi & few others. Only once did I even attempt to take a walk using the walker outside the hospital. And I remember a worker from the groundfloor helping me get around.
The doctor wouldnt show up at all. After the second xray I was concerned my bone growth was nonexistent in the left leg. I told this to this moron doctor. And his reply was as usual - we never had nonunion in our cases. And excess bone growth during lengthening is not good. It will make lengthening harder. While getting treatment in New York this year I learnt that how stupid he was. And he has had plenty of nonunions and all his cases ended with nonunion during my stay.
At 3cm I realized I cant take this **** anymore. I decided to stop. But the doctor said you had come so far spending so much and going through this pain you should complete the remaining 2cm. He persuaded me so much I decided to go on but slowly. I had surface infection during the later part of my stay and had to take injection every 12 hours. And Mrs Rahimi was supposed to do the injection. But she wouldnt turn up some time.But I used to get the injection and go to nurses downstairs. They were sweet and very helpful.
At3.8cm I totally decided to stop the lengthening. I told Dr of my decision and asked him to remove my externals and fix my internal rods. The decision was based on my observations. Every patient was suffering so much. And I lost faith in his methods. My walking was pathetic even in walker. And the external was just too much to take.
Besides the girl next door was basically having this procedure because of infection in her bone. I didnt want any such **** in my life. My surface infection had receded. And I thanked god and wanted to get out of the mess. I wasnt even able to do any of the physiotherapy stuff properly. I struggled and missed my real life.
At this time I still had to pay the remaining 5 Grand. I asked a friend of mine (confessing to him where i really was) to wire some money to the doc's account. The doc who pretended not to care about money and only about his results thus far refused to go ahead with the second surgery until the money is wired.
This is the first time I totally understood his nature. I mean, of course, no patient is going to run away with the external. Just get them fixed on the external. He has to give you money to remove them.
My friend failed to send money on time because of a glitch. Iran issues were just started to surface. And Iran was a blacklisted country to be sent money. Then my friend had to give an affidavit to release the money. I am sure he is right there at the top of CIA list right now ( ).
In the mean time I was supposed to get my visa extended. Mrs Rahimi took me in her car. God you should see how cooperative she was in getting me there. She would say 'Walk ,, Walk...' in an arrogant tone. I was like what the **** you stupid bitch???? I was so pissed that day. But I was like ok these sufferings are only until the externals are removed. Then i would be able to walk around. You can still see the flesh pierced region in my legs due to the pins getting into the legs.
I want to add that the pins break during the process. i had 2 pins breaking that way. And they change it using a tool and god that is PAINFUL. Majid had 7 pins breaking from his externals. Later I learnt that pins breaking indicates external devices starting fail (Improper fixation).
Once the money was shipped doc agreed to send me to the second surgery. The night before the second surgery I was taken for CT scan. I knew from my notes that my legs were off by atleast a millimeter. But Mrs Rahimi walking out with the scan said the legs were equal perfectly. I knew right there it was a lie. But I thought I would tell it to the doc the next morning before entering surgery room. I ****ing had to get out of THR asap.
Well I want to add that my right leg was longer by a mm or so compared to my left. (Just remember this). There is a shocking thing later to follow.
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