Seven months of being bedridden and re-learning to walk, an entire life savings, and a mental battle that almost tipped him over the edge. 

That's what it's cost William to be seven centimeters taller. 

The engineer is one of the many British men who struggle with their seemingly unfixable height daily. But he is one of the few who has taken the leap - quite literally - into leg lengthening surgery. 

He has moved from temporary accommodation every few weeks, spent months lying to his family and still sports angry scars, but William insists it was all worth it.  

He is now a humble seven centimeters taller, and breathes a sigh of relief that he is now 5'9.

Even if it came at the cost of everything he owned - and then some.

Seven months on from the operation, William was just about doing the 'basics' like walking and jumping but still thought he had at least six more months until he was 'fully recovered'.

Wildly expensive and outrageously painful, William says he felt like he had no choice other than to undergo leg lengthening surgery after a 'constant mental struggle'.

He told the Daily Mail: 'I know I'm not the tallest now, right? But I'm taller. I'm happy, because when I put on clothes, I can put on a pair of trousers now and I fit in them now.

'I can put on low top shoes and I look good. Before my surgery, I was always wearing high tops, so I can stuff them with insoles and appear tall and then it just made me look weird.

'But my proportions look great now, like people don't even notice. It's not a big difference, but it helps, it counts.'

Leg lengthening is something that controversial influencer Clavicular has said is the future and other 'looksmaxxers' promote as a way to improve your dimensions.

Only the most extreme of the 'manosphere' are considered to undergo these surgeries, with the unfathomable recovery time and high risk of complications off-putting to most.

'It is one of the most rare PSL surgeries,' Clavicular, real name Braden Eric Peters, recently said.

He was referring to the 'perceived sexual level' scale, a pedantic rating system that compartmentalizes people's biological measurements in correlation to your sexual and social worth.

Looksmaxxers and teenagers alike will know the details - but what 'Clav' was saying was that leg lengthening is not for the faint of heart.

To grow those extra inches, a surgeon will break your bone (usually the femur, but potentially also the tibia) and insert a metal device that will pull your legs apart as they try to heal, forming new bone.

Costs vary depending on the calibre of the device, with the cheaper option being an external fixator that you manually crank wider with an Allen key about a millimetre every day.

The new, soft bone then requires time to harden and better manage bearing weight.

But William did not undergo this surgery because he was a looksmaxxer. Instead, he was just overwhelmed by an anxiety around his height that stopped him from living his life.

The engineer from London said: 'My main issue was the psychological effect of being short, and how I was perceived in society, how I've been treated by peers, by work colleagues, by friends and society in general.

'I always felt like the underdog, I always felt like I'm not good enough, I'm not man enough.

'I wouldn't want to see anyone. I'd be depressed, and I'd just be alone, not wanting to speak to anybody.

'And I just thought, "nah, there's got to be… I have to do something about this. This is really, really affecting my life".'

But it is months of being immobile in hospital while the bone is lengthened, with many more months afterwards learning how to walk again.

The magnitude of what he was about to undertake was not lost on William, who reconciled with his demons on the operating table.

'I'm thinking, "I can really die, you know, I could really lose my life… And if I do, I'm at peace, because I'm gonna die knowing that I've died chasing my dream, my goal".'

Despite preparing for his own death, he had not alerted any of his family that he was undergoing this surgery.

Clouded by shame, he said he 'felt they wouldn't have understood where I was coming from, because this whole height thing had been a big secret for me for my whole life'.

Originally developed in the mid-1960s (and the technique subsequently refined in the 1990s) to address significant leg-length differences caused by injuries, congenital deformities or as a consequence of polio, leg lengthening is only performed on the NHS to restore function and quality of life in cases of medical need.

If done privately in the UK, it can cost around a £100,000. In Turkey, it can be as little as £20,000.

After the surgery, doctors try get patients to walk within the first few days of surgery, but the pain was so overwhelming that William passed out on the floor and wet himself.

Ice would be routinely placed on his feet, new drips added and a smorgasbord of medicines supplied: painkillers, antibiotics, blood thinners, tramadol or Xanax for sleep, multivitamins, stomach protectants.

Then came weeks of physiotherapy to try stretch out the nerves and work the muscles while they were being pulled.

Some data suggests that the rate of complications is one in two patients, with horrific infections, bone deformities and nerve damage all on the line, and stories of many being hooked onto pain killers.

In some of the worst cases, the whole limb can be lost.

Marius Gros, who went from 171cm to almost 181cm, had taken out a loan for his surgery, which he is still paying off today.

The Dublin-based barber said waking up after the surgery was 'the worst pain ever, like I was hit by a truck or something…I was screaming for morphine because I thought I was dying'.

After the 'difficult' first few weeks, the 28-year-old promised 'it gets easier' - 'you still have your moments of pain, but it is tolerable.'

But the weeks afterwards of living with the fixator could still be agony - 'when my girlfriend was pushing the wheelchair and there were bumps on the road, I could feel it in my legs, in the open wounds, all the vibrations.'  

In the end, he experienced 'three or four infections' after his surgery which made even just touching the skin around the wound unbearable.   

But it was the agonising pain of his nerves being stretched that made Marius stop a few centimetres less than he had hoped.

Far from regretting his decision, William had a similar experience of having to stop earlier than he hoped.

At seven centimeters, he was in agony: 'Everything, my soft tissues, muscles, everything was so stretched, I couldn't even straighten my knees,' he described. But an extra 1.5cm would have still been ideal.   

William said he tried everything: insoles, hanging from bars, supplements promising growth, but nothing did the trick.

Making himself homeless for the added height was worth it: 'I can always make money and go back to work. I just needed that time to recover…I'm starting again from scratch.' 

This operation was the only way to liberate - and save - himself, he believed. 

Marius was much the same: 'Walking down the street now I feel happy, I feel confident, the more I'm able to do all the things like before, the happier and better I feel'.

Despite the horrors, he said he would '100%' encourage other people to get this surgery.

'This is how I see things: Spend £20,000, be in a wheelchair for five months not being able to walk, but then it's five months, and then you're going to be tall for the rest of your life.'

Marius compared the surgery to changing your body by going on a diet to lose weight or going to the gym to gain muscle.

'It is an important aspect, trying to be the best version of yourself…it's normal for a girl to get breast implants, but it's weird if a guy gets limb lengthening. It should become more normal.'

He added: 'If you want to buy a new car, you've got to spend 60k easily for a proper one. So it's an investment in yourself.'

Marius posts frequently online about his experience with the surgery on TikTok, where he said he is just 'keeping it real', admitting 'it's going to be painful, crazy, painful. But it's worth it in the end'.

He did not believe his videos pushed a certain ideology on what could be impressionable young men.

'You can't get a surgery until you're 18 when you're a grown up and can make your own decision.

'I'm just showing the aspects of the process, you know? I'm like "look, this is an option. If you feel insecure, you can do the surgery"…So I don't think I'm pushing them to get it, I'm just showing them it is possible.'

Women, inevitably, become part of the discussion. Marius said it was 'of course' something that contributed to the decision to get this surgery - 'you're the main reason why men do this'.

Interestingly, both of the men we spoke to didn't feel like their insecurities around height would be solved by therapy. 

TikTok users would tell Marius on his livestreams that he should probably speak to a psychiatrist about his 'problems' but he felt this was pointless - 'what's he going to say to me? 'Be happy with yourself?' That's not going to fix my problem.'

William similarly said: 'I'm the kind of person who doesn't really feel there's any value in sitting down in front of somebody who doesn't really know you.

'I just never thought anyone would really understand where I was coming from.'

With so much at risk, some doctors refuse to do these 'arduous' operations for cosmetic reasons.

Dr Nima Hidari, a reconstructive surgeon based in Harley Street, is one such doctor. He told the Daily Mail: 'Patients do need to have psychological assessments to understand that they're doing it for the right reason.

'You have to be in absolute optimum health, physiologically…

'Have you got the finances not just to pay for the surgery, but to be able to live during the period of time where you will be economically inactive because you're engaged in lengthening your limb?

'What are you going to do to feed yourself during this time, and what are the consequences of the adaptations that you require at your house during this period of time because you're unable to bear weight?

'The problem with those is that if you have your surgery elsewhere, you return to the UK, you are then left without the expertise you need to shepherd you through this quite complex treatment.'

William was one such case, who completed his own self-directed rehab when he returned to the UK because he could not afford professional support. Fortunately, he did not experience any complications.

It's not clear how many patients are travelling abroad to get this done and then having complications when they get home but one clinic in America reported 22 cases in one year.

Dr Hidari said he had helped 'many' patients in such scenarios while both working in the NHS and privately - at least 'one or two patients every year'.

'They really are difficult problems to deal with and I don't envy the poor souls that have them,' he sighed.

And while he refused to perform the surgeries for cosmetic reasons due to the complications that can arise, he acknowledged that this surgery is usually 'life changing' for these men 'in an incredibly positive way'.

But he added: 'The thing which is really critical to understand, though, is that when you look at any cosmetic procedure and this is with breast augmentation with, the variety of cosmetic procedures that men and women have on their faces using Botox, all of these things…

'There is a deep psychological element to this, there is a deficiency somewhere in that individual's life that then gets focused on a particular physical issue that they feel like correcting will resolve all of their problems.'

Additional reporting: Mimi Yates