This growth operation cost an arm and a leg.
A Georgia man was so unhappy with his 6-foot frame that he spent more than $100,000 on a Turkish leg-lengthening surgery to add 7 inches to his height.
“I realized that my legs were always looking weird, and I didn’t know what it was,” Brian Sanchez, a 33-year-old mortgage broker, told The Sun.
After sitting next to his much-taller brother-in-law, the married father of two “realized my legs were too short for my body. I’m broad, have long arms, and I’m wide, but my short legs make me look different,” he added.
“I almost look like a huge thumb, like those thumb men from ‘Spy Kids.’”
Sanchez researched leg-lengthening operations and found the Live Life Taller clinic in Turkey, which has performed more than 4,400 such procedures — and is staffed by physiotherapists and health advisers who have undergone the extension surgery themselves, according to its website.
Sanchez’s family, he said, was in “disbelief, but they also said that it is typical of me.”
“I know this is a very crazy thing, it’s extremely expensive, time-consuming, difficult, painful and even risky in some respects,” he said.
Sanchez spent roughly $37,000 on his first — yes, first — leg surgery in December 2022.
“They broke my tibia and fibula and hollowed out the inside of the tibia, taking out the bone marrow,” he recounted to The Sun.
“They then put a rod inside the bone and fastened it with screws and attached the bone segments via pins to external fixators so you have this piece of steel on the outside of your legs and have these constant open wounds that won’t close until you remove all the hardware.”
While Sanchez had to use an Allen wrench to turn the fixator bolt once a day for two months straight, he said not sleeping was the hardest part for him — though he did confess that he was not ready for how painful the procedures actually were.
“I think the pain will be worth it — once it’s all finished I’ll just be able to enjoy being taller, and hopefully feel on top of the world,” said Sanchez, who had grown about 3 inches since February.
In March, he spent another $69,587 for the second surgery to elongate his femurs, and “felt great” after.
“There was almost no pain throughout the entire process, only from lengthening from actually stretching my legs.”
Sanchez, who is still in a wheelchair as he recovers, has added a total of 7 inches to his height but intends to remain grounded.
“I don’t want to be disappointed but it’s hard to imagine that I’m not going to enjoy it,” he told The Sun.
“From the few times that I’ve already stood up, it is bizarre to see people that used to be my height come up to under my nose — it’s really weird, and it’s a lot of fun just seeing the world in a slightly different perspective.”
Sanchez is hardly the first person to pay handsomely to reach for the stars.
Moses Gibson, a 5-foot-5 41-year-old from Minnesota, paid $75,000 to add 3 inches to his height in 2016. In March, he dropped another $98,000 to add another 2.
German model Theresia Fischer, 31, forked over $124,000 for two surgeries to add 5 and a half inches to her frame, making her 6 feet tall barefoot.
