Talk About Tennis 2.0

With a procedure like this, there are, of course, some caveats. All the height gain obviously comes from your legs, so your proportions can look a little weird, especially when you’re naked. Also, the recovery can be long and taxing. When we meet, the bones in John’s legs are not yet fully healed, and a small section of his right femur is still a little soft, like al dente spaghetti; the smallest stumble could snap a bone in two. And it’s especially dangerous since he’s a big guy, over 200 pounds.

Then there’s the pain, which is relentless, ambient. The extension of the nails in his legs stretched the nerves and tissue around the bones—especially the thick, meaty muscles like the hamstrings—to an almost excruciating degree. He couldn’t walk for months. “They fill you with enough painkillers that it’s bearable,” John explains, but his biggest fear was becoming addicted to the drugs, so he weaned himself off the regimen earlier than he should have.

Why would someone like John—handsome, confident, funny, a father to three—shell out for a procedure that costs more than a Tesla and results in months of agony for a couple of extra inches? It’s not like he was particularly short, at just shy of the average height of an American man (five feet nine). But the opportunity to be above average was too good to pass up. “I noticed that taller people just seem to have it easier,” John says, laughing. He shrugs. “The world seems to bend for them.”