Limb lengthening: Inside the surgery that makes you taller

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — Rich Rotella carries a handwritten white card with 16 recognizable names in his wallet.

“I’ve got Elijah Wood, 5’6”, (Al) Pacino 5’7”, (Joe) Pesci 5’ 4”,” Rotella said, showing reporter Andrew Lofholm the card.

They’re all leading actors and they’re all 5’7” or shorter. Rotella is 5’5”.

“The card in my wallet is so I can talk back to a casting director in a respectful sense. Because I have had them go, you’re too short to play the lead so I’ve actually pulled out that card and gone bam, bam, bam,” he said, simulating point to each name.

The 37-year-old has been working as an actor in Hollywood for 12 years now.

“Tell me career-wise, how you think being three inches taller is going to help,” Lofholm asked Rotella.

“So, in Hollywood, nobody talks about this because it’s not politically correct or what have you, but the reality is (that) most lead actors in television, in film, are at least 5’8” or taller,” Rotella said.

He says he started to feel self-conscious about his height in middle school. Then later, as a young adult, he began to seriously consider doing something about it.

“College for sure. I was like God, I wish I was taller, but everything was external devices, which is the old-school way,” he said. “I almost jumped into it in 2013 but the timing wasn’t right, it’s a very expensive surgery, and you are definitely down and out.”

As Hollywood productions slowed down during the pandemic, Rotella was on YouTube trying to scratch that same itch that just wouldn’t go away.

“I came across this amazing YouTube channel called Cyborg 4 Life. And Victor Egonu, he’s my business partner, he’s the owner of that channel and he had interviewed like 30 to 40 surgeons at least (who) are doing limb lengthening, cosmetic and limb lengthening. I looked up where (Egonu’s) from and he’s from Baltimore, Maryland, and I’m like I lived in Baltimore for eight years so I sent him a message on Instagram and he wrote back,” he said.

When Egonu was 11, he broke his left tibia at the growth plate in a bad rollerblading accident, stunting its growth. Because his legs were two different lengths, he developed scoliosis. About 10 years ago, he had his leg lengthened.

“I was able to take my first steps after the surgery, tears started to well up. I’m getting kind of emotional right now because it’s like I knew it was going to be the best of the rest of my life,” he said in an interview with CBS12 News.

After a surgeon asked Egonu if he could answer some questions from potential patients, he realized the need for a channel like his, focused on limb lengthening for either medical or cosmetic reasons.

The plan: Rotella would get the surgery and the two of them would make a documentary about it then try to sell it to a major streaming service sometime next year.

“Before we knew it, we got the top surgeon in the world, Dr. Dror Paley, we got a few sponsors, and we made this project happen,” Egonu said.

West Palm Beach-based orthopedic surgeon Dr. Paley started the Paley Institute on the grounds of St. Mary’s Medical Center. He’s been making people taller for more than 30 years.

Rotella is his next patient.

“We put in these special rods inside his bones, in his case the femurs, the thigh bones. We break the bone and then there’s a remote control from the outside that operates the magnetic motor in the rod, and this slowly pulls apart the bone a millimeter a dayabout three and a quarter inches (in total),” Dr. Paley said.

A millimeter a day for 80 days, the bones will slowly be pulled apart. If all goes well, when the bone heals it’ll bridge that three-inch gap with new bone, and Rotella will stand three inches taller, 5’8”.

Those rods Dr. Paley mentioned have been around for about a decade; they’re the key to the procedure becoming less invasive.

In the past few years, the stigma has started to fade. Dr. Paley estimates he does about 100 cosmetic limb-lengthenings annually.

“I remember this guy flew in from Holland. He was 5’11”, and I’m 5’11” and a half, and I’m like wondering why he’s here and at that time, I was early in my career and I refused to lengthen him; but now I lengthen people who are 5’11” who really see themselves as short,” Dr. Paley said.

Rotella said, “The biggest thing I would say is this, watch out for judgement. Because a lot of people are not going to understand your choice to do this. Oh, you’re perfectly healthy, but for some reason you want to be taller. Oh, you’re crazy or oh you’re ridiculous. Really? Have you lived in that person’s shoes for 20, 30, 40 years?”

“So, tomorrow is the big day, how are you feeling right now?” Lofholm asked Rotella.

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“I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little nervous. In less than 24 hours, both of my legs are broken technically. With the (rods in my legs),” he said.

The timeline goes like this: a week after surgery the lengthening process begins, and physical therapy.

Dr. Paley requires his patients to stay local for three months to make sure there are no complications.

Price tag: there are a few different options, but it costs around $100,000 out of pocket. Insurance does not cover cosmetic surgeries.

We are following up with Rotella, and we’ll have an update on his progress later this month. We’ll go more in depth on how the surgery and the months-long limb lengthening process both work.