'Thank you for breaking both my legs;' Inside the surgery that makes you taller

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — “Thank you for breaking both my legs, it’s very Hollywood. Tomorrow will be three weeks,” Rich Rotella told his surgeon, Dr. Dror Paley, during his first follow-up appointment post-surgery.

By choice, he had both of his thigh bones broken by Dr. Paley, from the Paley Institute in West Palm Beach.

In less than three months, Rotella will hopefully be three inches taller: he’s the rare patient who underwent cosmetic limb lengthening and willing to talk about it publicly.

“You feel like you’re doing it for no reason and you’re an idiot and all of a sudden, you look down at your knees and they’re further away,” Rotella recalled recently to CBS12 News reporter Andrew Lofholm

The 37-year-old actor, before surgery, was five-feet-five inches tall He’ll grow to be about five-foot-eight.

After Rotella’s legs are broken, special rods were put in each leg to keep the broken femur from healing too quickly.

For 80 days, the bones are separated a millimeter a day.

“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 day, in other words, about three-and-a-quarter inches and that’s the goal of treatment in him,” Dr. Paley said during a recent interview.

Rotella uses that device four times a day, a quarter millimeter at a time.

When the bone finally heals, it’ll be three inches longer. Rotella will be taller.

“I’m not going to lie, the first day of surgery was like, ‘Oh my God!' It felt awful. It felt like two massive knives in my legs but eventually I feel like I get better by three percent every day,” Rotella said.

Rotella is living in West Palm Beach for the first three months, in case something goes wrong and so he can maintain his physical therapy regimen: four times daily.

He met his girlfriend, Kessya De Amorim, in August last year, just as he was closing in on his surgery.

“I said I have a really important phone call with Dr. Paley. And she said, who’s Dr. Paley? And I was like you’re going to totally find out,” Rotella recalls.

She stuck by his side, coming with him to West Palm to help him recover and grow.

“I told him I’ll be here for you, you just have to wait. I told him, I hope you don’t break my heart,” she said.

Not only has she not met his family in person, but Rotella also made her swear to secrecy.

“I remember saying, 'Sorry mom for not telling you, he had to be the one to come forward and say hey mom, hey family I’m doing this.' And I hope they don’t hate me.” she said.

Rotella wrote up a family email that went out the day after going under the knife, breaking the news about his decision.

Rotella’s mother, Elaine Ross, was at home in Maryland when she found out.

“I got a text from a family member that said, 'Is Rich okay?' because I got a strange email from him,” she said in an interview recently. “Honestly, the first thing I was sick to my stomach. I was, oh my gosh, what has he done.”

While some in the family weren’t happy about her son’s decision, she’s come to terms with it, flying to South Florida to support him.

“Are you okay with his decision?” Lofholm asked her.

“I have to be okay with his decision. This is what he’s decided, he’s a full-grown adult. I’m just going to go with the flow,” she said. “I understand why he didn’t tell me or the family because he would have got a lot of feedback, probably a lot of it wouldn’t have been helping him get where he needs to go.”

Kessya is good in her book, too.

“There are definitely angels and this one of them I am grateful to her for being here for Richard,” Ross said.

Rotella buzzed his hair right before surgery. He’s taking a picture a day to see how his growth is, both hair and height. He’ll include it in the documentary he’s hoping to sell to a major streaming service about his journey.

“I’ll be a chia pet, I’ll be a chia pet for the whole world to see and laugh at and that’s fine. You’ll be laughing and I’ll be eye level with you,” he said.

Right around a year from surgery, Rich will have the rods removed, he’ll have basic function fully back by then. It’ll take about two years for full athletic function to come back.