Cutting Her Down to Size

Ann Rowston, 20, is a lanky English lass who had been unhappy ever since adolescence, and with good reason. By some quirk of nature, her pituitary gland failed to shut down its output of growth hormone as she matured, and she kept on growing to a towering 6 ft. 7 in. "I used to feel as if I had two heads," says Ann. "The children were the worst to face. They'd shout 'Lanky!' and 'What's the weather like up there?' and that sort of thing. I wanted to hide in shame."

Last week, eager to face the world for a change, Ann hobbled out of an orthopedic hospital in the little Welsh-marches town of Oswestry; she was walking awkwardly on two canes, but far happier than she had been in years. In the past eight months, Orthopedic Surgeon David Lloyd Griffiths had pared her down to a mere six feet.

Taking Up the Slack. Last summer Ann went to the hospital for advice about special shoes. It was on that visit that Surgeon Griffiths startled her by asking whether she would like to grow smaller. "I was upset at first," she says. "I thought it was just another gibe. But then I found he really meant it."

Surgery of the kind Griffiths was suggesting is now almost a routine measure to restore symmetry and balance when one limb, particularly a leg, has been shortened by disease or accident. But there is always a danger of infection; the bone ends may not unite properly, or there may be complications in the soft tissues. An orthopedist will not lightly undertake such operations for the sole purpose of reducing height. Ann Rowston's extreme tallness, however, justified the procedure, and Sur geon Griffiths satisfied himself that she was healthy enough to stand the strain.

In four operations, a month or more apart, he shortened first one thigh, then the other, then one lower leg, then the other. The surgery involved sawing out almost four inches of the single bone (femur) in each thigh and about 3 1/2 in. of the two bones (tibia and fibula) in the legs. The extra lengths of arteries and veins, muscles and tendons, had to be squeezed in and left to "take up the slack" by a gradual, concertina-like contraction.

And Then the Twist. Now that she is learning how to walk once more, Ann Rowston still has problems in propor tion. Her torso cannot be shortened.

Her hands now dangle too close to her knees, and she faces more surgery to shorten her arms -- operations that are technically more forbidding because of the delicate neuromuscular control needed for the hands. But she is anxious to get on with it. "The most wonderful moment of all," she says, "will be when I can walk down the street looking at other people instead of trying to hide from them."

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