Matt Roloff Opens up About His 15 Surgeries: 'What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger'

Little People Big World star Matt Roloff opened up about his 15 surgeries related to his Achondroplasia in a July 20 podcast.

While on Reality Life With Kate Casey, Roloff gave fans a look into the struggles he has faced and how he persevered in the face of adversity.

"As they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," Roloff told Casey as reported by InTouch Weekly. "I had a rough childhood. Not from a family perspective but just from orthopedic surgery, spending long periods of time — sometimes months — in a hospital with very limited access to your parents. It was just the way they did it back in those days and going through some very painful operations. So I do think all of that sort of built up a muscle of resiliency and gave me a sense of can-do and tenacity."

Roloff told Casey that he is hardly the only one to face life-changing challenges. Within his own family, his brother Sam has the same form of degenerative dwarfism.

A younger brother, Joshua, died from heart and lung problems he was born with. Although doctors did not think he would ever be released from the hospital after he was born, Joshua lived to age 34, Radar Online reported.

"When Joshua was born — about two weeks before Christmas in 1964, when I was over two years old — my parents faced more childbirth trauma," Roloff wrote in his 1999 memoir, Against Tall Odds: Being A David In a Goliath World. "Only this time it was the uncertainty over whether their new baby would ever make it out of the hospital alive... Not long after the delivery the doctors diagnosed Josh as having severe heart and lung problems they thought would probably take his life before he was a day old."

Roloff wrote that his brother underwent several surgeries before his doctors ultimately realized that Joshua's conditions could not be corrected. Joshua died in 1999, before the Roloff family became reality TV superstars thanks to TLC.

Roloff's son Zach has also had at least seven surgeries because of dwarfism. He was only 16 months old during his first surgery.

Some of the symptoms of Roloff's form of dwarfism include a permanent sway of the lower back called lordosis, bowed legs, back pain and an abnormal curvature of the spine, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. One serious symptom is spinal stenosis, the narrowing of the spinal canal. Hydrocephalus is an uncommon complication and causes a build-up of fluid that results in increased head size or brain abnormalities.

Roloff also cannot walk without crutches. His most recent surgery was in 2016, when he had neck surgery. That procedure came with the risk of paralysis.

"I don't want the kids to worry about my medical stuff," Roloff said in the Little People, Big World episode about the procedure. "If something changes or something goes wrong, then yes, I would want to tell them. But until it gets that serious, I don't see it as necessary."

Thankfully the procedure was successful. Just last weekend, the Roloff family reunited to celebrate Roloff's father Ron turning 80.