Li Yanuo paced alone on the playground of the school he once attended, and every corner of the place made ripples in his heart. The happy times of the past played out in his mind like a marquee, and he couldn't help but go to the place where he was ridiculed and bullied by his classmates, and his eyes swept over the place that made his heart ache.
The 40-year-old shook his head self-deprecatingly, his face covered with wrinkles, as if he had accumulated all the pain and regret over the years. He lamented: "If I didn't care so much about height, I wouldn't have made such a stupid decision."
For the sake of momentary anger, he did not hesitate to spend 160,000 yuan 9 years ago to have a broken bone surgery that could not make up for the height defect at all. In retrospect, how naïve and naïve his decision was! The surgery allowed him to grow only 7.2 centimeters taller, which was far from the desired result.
Moreover, postoperative complications continued to haunt him like a relentless nightmare.
Those days are painful memories for Mr. Li, whose body, once scarred as a critically ill patient, is now skinny due to severe muscle atrophy and osteoporosis.
The most terrifying thing is that those complications have not completely healed yet, and they are like the bane of Dela, firmly wrapped around his body.
"What happened to me? Why are you so confused about appearances? The money that has been earned with all the hard work has also gone bankrupt..."Li Yanuo regretted not being at the beginning, and his eyes began to become gloomy.
He began to realize that the importance of appearance was nothing compared to health and happiness, and if he had had had been a little more self-accepting, he would not have embarked on the thorny road of no return.
In 1994, it can be said that it was the source of everything, when 8-year-old Li Yanuo began to be ridiculed and bullied by his classmates, and his height problem was used as a "laughing stock".
Li Yanuo was born shorter than his peers, and his body was too thin, like a "child". Classmates often mock him for this, or simply call him nicknames such as "Li Shorty" and "Short-legged Shrimp".
Sometimes, they would deliberately hold his bag high in the air for him to try to get it.
The ridicule was like a knife, stabbing Li Yanuo's heart again and again. He began to develop extreme low self-esteem and anxiety about his height, and he began to wonder if he was destined to be a "little man" and not be able to win the respect of others in the future.
During class, Li Yanuo always chooses to sit in the last row; In physical education class, he kept a distance from everyone, for fear of becoming the object of ridicule from his classmates again. He began to gradually isolate himself from the collective, living a self-enclosed life, and the shadow of height began to hang over his heart.
The shadow of Li Yanuo's height has always lingered in the depths of his heart, and as he grows, this distress not only does not disappear, but becomes a psychological barrier that he strongly wants to break through.
When he was in junior high school, Li Yanuo began to inquire about various secret recipes and folk remedies for growing taller. Some people say that eating certain Chinese herbs can work wonders, while others recommend massage tendon pulling or special exercises to grow bones.
Li Yanuo tried everything, and sometimes even turned over and got out of bed in the middle of the night to do stretching exercises, in a vain attempt to stretch his muscles and bones.
He had tried many so-called "long-standing medicinal wines" and bought many expensive topical ointments. The whole family was shocked by this. When Li Yanuo walked on the way home, he would deliberately increase the span of his steps to pull his leg muscles.
Before going to bed, he would repeat the stretch of his limbs more than 100 times in bed.
However, while this did make him taller in a few years, it was only slightly faster than the others, and it did not solve his "short" problem. Li Yanuo gradually felt anxious, and his disappointment with the results of the treatment also made him a little discouraged.
For this long-term heart disease, Li Yanuo, on the eve of high school graduation, was determined to solve it. He began to search for information on the Internet, and also asked the parents of his classmates if there were any doctors he was familiar with who could help him analyze the specific situation.
One parent suggested to me, saying, "If you're really concerned about height, you can consider an osteotomy, but it can be expensive and risky."
Li Yanuo's eyes shone with hope, and from then on, he began to collect all kinds of information about the "Grow Tall Surgery", studied and verified its pros and cons and effects many times, and prepared everything for the operation in detail.
One day in 2013, 20-year-old Li Yanuo finally made up his mind to undergo kidney and osteotomy surgery to increase his height after a large amount of relevant information.
He learned through the Internet and his relatives and friends that this kind of surgery is not only expensive and risky, but his inner desire can no longer be suppressed. He dreams of having surgery to solve his years of height anxiety and regain his self-confidence.
The procedure is to first amputate both lower leg bones and announce the tendon severance, and then insert a metal nail on each leg to gradually lengthen the bone by using the vibration of the instrument, and finally achieve the desired height lift.
Li Yanuo searched repeatedly, and finally successfully found a minimally invasive surgery expert from a well-known hospital in China. However, experts warn that this kind of kidney osteotomy surgery is very harmful to the body, and the recovery period is also very long, and various complications such as muscle atrophy and osteoporosis may occur after the operation.
After much hesitation, Li Yanuo finally made up his mind to undergo surgery. He likened the decision to a big gamble in his life, believing that he had no way back. The cost of the operation was as high as 160,000 yuan, and all his savings plus all the subsidies from his parents were far from enough.
Despite this, Li Yanuo is still determined to pursue the dream of "tall", and he is willing to gamble on it.
Although his family had been retained, Li Yanuo's determination made them helpless and could only watch him walk into the operating room. On the day of the operation, Li Yanuo's parents' eyes were full of longing and worry, and he himself was also worried.
On September 24, 2014, Li Yanuo underwent his first major surgery. Before the surgery, doctors predicted that he would be able to grow 7 to 10 centimeters taller after the surgery.
The operation was a great success, and Li Yanuo successfully survived the most painful stage of the operation. But the long recovery period that followed made him deeply feel the pain of the "nightmare".
Shortly after he was discharged from the hospital, his legs began to swell with severe pain, which was unbearable. Although the doctor explained that this was a normal reaction, and that the elongation of the bones would inevitably lead to the expansion of the surrounding flesh, Li Yanuo still endured the pain and persevered, hoping to overcome this "dark period" and achieve recovery.
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and his calves soon began to ulcerate and pus, and large areas of skin and muscle tissue began to die and fall off. In desperation, the doctors had to repeatedly change and disinfect his dressings and inject large amounts of antibiotics to try to control the spread of the infection.
Li Yanuo's physical condition is getting worse day by day, his weight is severely reduced, and his once strong wheat-colored body is now skinny, like a critically ill patient on the verge of death. Even more worryingly, his skeletal function and muscles showed signs of severe deterioration.
Li Yanuo was once sent to the intensive care unit for rescue, and his family thought he couldn't hold on. Although he later recovered a life, all indicators of his body were seriously exceeded, and doctors said that he needed to stay in bed for a long time to recover slightly.
In this way, Li Yanuo began a long and torturous life of cultivation. During this time, he was on the verge of a mental breakdown, and his disappointment and self-denial about the operation reached an extreme.
Especially during those desperate nights, he even wondered if he should end his life like this.