With all of the innovations in the plastic surgery arena, you’d think someone would have invented a spine extender.

I know spine surgery is tricky, but if surgeons can cut into your brain with no ill effects, why can’t plastic surgeons add a piece of PVC pipe to your spine for added height, or even higher up for a swanlike neck? Nowadays, every part of the human body can be enlarged, lifted, smoothed, or improved upon, so what’s holding up advances in the height department?

Because cosmetic surgery doesn’t qualify for reimbursement under my health insurance, I’ve had to forgo lifts of my face, neck, knees, and glutes, but this operation might possibly be considered necessary for one’s health.

I recently read that a 5’9″ male is considered to be overweight at 202 pounds, but obese at 203 pounds. One pound changes his status from needing to lose a little weight to needing gastric bypass surgery. If that same man’s height were increased by one or two inches, he wouldn’t be close to being obese. He might not even be all that much overweight.

A rule of thumb for weight is that a man gets to weigh six pounds for each inch he is over five feet, plus 100 pounds. A woman gets five pounds for each inch over five feet, plus 100 pounds.

Up until middle age, I was 5’7-1/2″ inches tall. That meant that my ideal weight was 137.5 pounds, which was right on the nose. I weighed 138 pounds for years and looked fine to me. I could even get up to 144 pounds before I began to worry or take action. Then middle age hit me on the head, squishing me down to 5’6″ almost overnight. My new height changed my ideal weight to 130 pounds. I went from fairly slim and tall to chunky and medium height. I know for a fact that gravity hit me with a hammer from above, because my rib cage collapsed onto itself and the weight that had been evenly distributed there came crashing down and settled around my middle, like a little kid’s swim bubble. 

After months of denying the existence of my new spare tire, I eventually had to face the truth the day I was confronted with a three-way mirror in a store’s dressing room. After several stunned moments of staring at my reflection, I reached up to get a dress that I had hung on a high hook. That’s when I discovered that when I stretched, the weight disappeared. It was gone, just like that. But, the catch was that if I wanted the extra weight to disappear permanently, I’d have to walk around with my arms extended to the heavens for the rest of my life, or lose the weight and exercise.

Then one day I got an email from a company that offered to extend a body part that I wasn’t born with. That was my Eureka moment. If they could extend that, why couldn’t they extend my spine, and my neck, while they were at it?

Unfortunately, I’m a big-picture person and don’t bother with details anymore. (I gave that up in my forties.) So, if anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, knock yourself out. All I ask is that I get free spine and neck extensions once the process is perfected. Or, that you figure out how to get the procedures approved under my health insurance.