An aspiring lawmaker had his legs deliberately broken as part of an excruciating cosmetic procedure to make him taller.
Thomas Keeper opted for the brutal surgery, ‘world’s most painful operation’ to gain four inches on his 5’6′ frame.
‘It has taken away that insecurity. I don’t worry about my height now,’ he said.
Keeper is a Liberal candidate for Calgary Confederation in Canada.
He underwent the procedure in 2010, but details of the surgery have re-emerged amid his election bid.
The agonizing, four hour operation costs between $75,000 and $100,000 and involves drilling steel rods into the patient’s thighs.
But Keeper said the agony is nothing compared to the ‘pain’ of being short.
‘The world treats you differently,’ Keeper said in an interview with DailyMail.com’s sister publication The Mail on Sunday in 2011.
‘Look at the way people mock Tom Cruise and Nicolas Sarkozy.’
Thomas Keeper had his legs deliberately broken as part of an excruciating cosmetic procedure to make him taller
The agonizing, four hour operation costs between $75,000 and $100,000 and involves drilling steel rods into the patient’s thighs
The father-of-two explained he met his 5’8″ wife Maggie on a dating site not long after receiving the surgery.
‘When I told my wife about the operation she said she would never have been interested in a guy shorter than her,’ he said.
Leg-lengthening surgery used to be carried out only on people who had limbs of unequal length or for correcting dwarfism – short stature caused by a medical condition.
But an increasing number of people are having the operation for cosmetic reasons.
Those accepted for the operation, which lasts between four and six hours, can gain up to 6in in height (a maximum of 4in in a single operation) but the average increase is two-and-a-half inches.
Almost all patients are in their 20s and 30s. And a third are women, many of whom want to be taller to pursue a career as a model, or because they say being under 5ft means they are ‘treated like children’.
During the operation, a hole is drilled through the center of the thigh bone from the top.
A surgical saw is inserted through the same incision and used to cut the bone in two at the middle of the thigh.
Keeper said the agonizing surgery helped him deal with a lifelong insecurity and meet his 5’8″ wife Maggie who he said would not have been interested in dating a shorter man
Dr Shahab Mahboubian, who owns the Height Lengthening Institute in California, poses with a steel rod which is inserted into the thigh as part of the procedure
An 11in telescopic stainless-steel rod is inserted vertically into the channel drilled in the leg bone and secured using screws.
After the skin has been closed, each leg is turned inwards and outwards, a movement which makes a clicking sound and lengthens the rod.
The leg is elongated by 0.4in during the surgical procedure and the patient does 15 ‘clicks’ backwards and forwards each day to give daily growth of 0.04in.
After two months, the leg grows by two-and-a-half inches. The extra height is determined ‘not by what the patient wants but what the body can accept’, according to Dr Jean-Marc Guichet, a pioneer in the procedure.
After the post-operative pain, patients also suffer from the ‘clicking’ procedure and discomfort caused by the remodeling of muscles and tendons.
The bone takes up to eight months to grow and fill the gap, or ‘fuse’, and at this point many patients can resume all normal activities, including sports. The screws are removed in a second operation after about 18 months.
Dr Guichet said he has seen a three fold increase in requests for his services.
And it appears that Keeper’s decision could potentially be of benefit for his political aspirations, as research suggests that voters in the US at least have tended to plump for the taller presidential candidate.
The nails work by breaking at least two leg bones in half. Nails are then drilled into either end of each femur or tibia, which is slowly teased apart with magnets over weeks while it heals naturally, resulting in a longer bone. But it can leave patients in agony and wheelchair-bound during the process, with months of physiotherapy needed afterwards
Then and now: After the surgery, Alfonso Flores, 28, from Dallas, Texas, stands at 6ft 1, having grown by two inches as a result of a cutting-edge procedure
A study in 2019 found the tallest presidential candidate had won the popular vote in two-thirds of US elections.
‘Being short can cause a huge psychological and mental impact on a person’s life and can decrease their confidence,’ Dr Shahab Mahboubian, who owns the Height Lengthening Institute in California, said.
‘Those who undergo the surgery desire an increase in their self-confidence and they are sick of feeling inferior to others.’
He added: ‘The psychological positive impact and boost in self-esteem after getting taller is tremendous and truly beautiful to witness.’
