Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! That is all.
Elbows - specifically, radial head and radial neck; I’ve had one of each - aren’t bad either. Apparently these two are about the only “broken elbows” that don’t require surgery. In fact, they don’t even cast them, just a sling. Well, the first time, I was in a plaster splint for a few days, but that was all. The second time, the break was missed at the ER, I was told it was just a sprain, here’s a scrip for some Vicodin (which still boggles me; I was from out of town and wasn’t even ASKING for Good Drugz… guess I looked honest). Two weeks later, back at home and the elbow still hurt, I saw a local ortho who confirmed it had indeed been broken, and “use the sling as long as you need to”.
I have to ask this; since this has happened to you before, what are you doing on the roof?
I had a hip replacement one year ago (due to arthritis, not an accident) and if I even start to look too long at the roof my wife goes ballistic. It annoys me (hell, I like going up on the roof), but I have to concede that that the hardware I am carrying around makes any injury problematic. Of all the things you lose with age, the ability to go up on the roof has to rank pretty low.
Only if they’re somebody else’s! Ribs are horrible to break. Try not breathing for a couple weeks until it heals. Or moving. And a sneeze! Fuggitaboutit! Bad, bad, bad news. No, ribs are definitely not one of the good ones to break.
Oops, forgot to say:
Hope you feel better soon, 2gigch1!
By obligation I was getting ready to clean the gutters. I have been on rooftops manu times and I don’t fear heights. It was a folding ladder that did me in. What came as a greater surprise was it was my second trip up when it went.
When I broke the femur in 2008 I had a 47cm rod inserted right down the middle of he bone. A few weeks later, emboldened by my friend the Percocet ™, I fenced in my 1.3 acre yard. I ended up putting so much force on the healing bone I bent the pins on the lower end of the rod (down near my knee.)
Never knew it until the orthopedic doc did an xray, and came into the room with a big ‘WTF did you do?’ look on his face.
I’ll never do that again.
Seconded.
I broke my right collarbone as a kid/teen (fell off, and into, a *fallen *tree. That’s a pretty retarded way to injure oneself let me tell you) and I didn’t even realize something might be wrong until the morning after upon noticing I was still in a bit more pain than I should. I thought it was just a nasty bruise or something.
And because the first hospital I was taken to was staffed by drooling troglodytes who only took a frontal X-ray, didn’t see squat and called it a day, it would be another week or so before I was correctly diagnosed at another hospital where French Dr. House epiphanied his way out of this medical mystery by the clever and ingenious method of taking an X-ray from the top - the broken ends of the bone were a good 5 cm apart :eek:. It looked like the symbol for switches on electrical diagrams, not even kidding. They’d somehow missed it the first time around. Unbelievable.
Still, pain-wise it wasn’t bad at all.
I wouldn’t recommend snapping your pelvis in half down the middle though. That one involved sincerely severe suckage.
Surgery next Tuesday. Grrr.
Well, surgery definitely sucks, but not as badly as just being in pain non-stop!
Best of luck!
Do you have your own coffee mug at the ER, a la Tim Taylor?
I fractured a heel once and it was one of the most painful injuries ever. The worst, was a chipped big toe knuckle. You wouldn’t think a tiny chunk of bone could cause so much pain. Made a kidney stone feel like a vacation from pain.
An update -
First thanks to all for the kind words. All are appreciated.
Surgery was Tuesday morning, came home just before six yesterday (Wednesday.)
The folks at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, VA were very, very good. I have been to a few hospitals, and I know what less than good is like. These folks made me feel safe, secure and professionally treated. A nice stay all the way around.
While I was there the anesthesiologist suggested I get a nerve block on my lower leg to deaden the pain and improve my results. I went with it and boy that was effective; 24 hours of paralysis on the lower leg. Couldn’t move the toes or anything. When it finally wore off I was truly shocked at how painful the area was (and I had been pre-treating with morphine before the block wore off but still, wow!)
Part of me got to thinking about how a simple nerve block like that might be an effective teaching tool for those who might take too many risks with themselves, just so they could get a feel for how permanent paralysis feels, but of course how can you actually force that on somebody? Scared the hell out of me, though.
Anyway - home, wife, cats, dogs, Lovanox, Percocet, computer, SDMB… all will be well.
Thanks again everyone!
Good luck with a speedy recovery
Sorry to hear about your fall, can I ask is it all healed now and how long it took ?
I’m in a similar situation, I broke my right heel bone 5 weeks ago and had surgery 4 weeks ago. They put a plate in there and screws, pain after surgery was sheer agony like nothing I have ever felt, they released me from hospital a few days after which a supply of pain meds. I got more pain meds from the doctors but i’ve been lowering the dose to suit the pain as time went on, I stopped taking pain meds completly last week.
For the first week most of my foot had no feeling, almost like the blood wasnt pumping correctly, my toes came back online first then it appeared to spread over my foot but after 5 weeks there are some parts of the wound area that has no feeling. Maybe it will return maybe not, the surgeon did say I might loose some feeling due to nerve damage.
They didnt put it in a cast, not sure if this is normal but the surgeon said I should exercise it, at first it had very little motion in it but slowly I could move it round more and more. It seams to have almost similar range of motions as my left foot but it clicks a little when I move it in certain ways.
The area that they cut open my foot is still covered in scabs all the way along, not sure how long that takes it heal up.
I’ve been told it will take 12 weeks for the bone to heal then I will be starting physiotherapy and it might be a full 6 months before I am completly healed and walking properly.
After a year and a half I sure hope it has healed… and welcome to the Straight Dope Alan.
Those 80’s Hyundais sure were flimsy weren’t they… hopefully the guy on the motorcycle stopped to help you.
Wow, this is a blast from the past.
Okay I’m about 18 months from the accident so I will try to sum up my situation.
First off I am 46, and I don’t think I heal as well as I used to. Couple that with the fact this is my 3rd break in this leg, I think my overall recovery is less than optimal.
On the foot I have a nice, deep, L shaped scar that still turns interesting colors at times. I still have moderate, constant pain in the foot and ankle, and because I overcompensated when walking I developed Plantar Fasciitis in my good foot. A visit to the podiatrist has helped.
Due to surgery I had several nerves cut in the foot. As a result I have poor sensation in the front of the foot pad just behind the toes, and between the toes, which makes it feel like my foot is swollen at the toes at all times even when it isn’t. Like my other injuries those nerves do slowly regenerate, which can result in moments when it feels like I am being stabbed in the foot.
I do have arthritis in that ankle now so range of motion is limited compared to before. Otherwise, and besides the pain, I do have full function and do what I need to do in a day. I shoot news for a living and often spend Friday nights on my feet (in the fall) shooting high school football, so Saturdays are often spent off my feet on the computer or watching tv.
You will likely find healing takes time if for no other reasons than the circulation in a foot can be poor and the demands placed on the foot due to walking are extreme.
My suggestion is to do as much physical therapy as you can stand as I was told your window of opportunity before permanent loss is limited. Your experiences as described are not abnormal. You will experience a lot more pain before it’s done. The clicking probably is more an early arthritic kind of thing, but I am no doctor. I do know the plate is not located in such a place where it would cause noise.
The foot is a complex mechanism, and your injury and surgery have really messed it up. Long term you should be okay assuming you have youth, are willing to follow a plan of physical therapy, and don’t have any issues such as diabetes which impact your circulation. Nerve damage is normal and you will get used to it. That doesn’t affect your life significantly.
Good luck to you.
So yeah, after I was cut off by the Hyundai I slid sideways, catching my left leg below the knee between the bike and the side if the car. I went airborne over the car and bounced down the street a few times before I came to a rest on my back. Despite the fact it was 95 degrees I was wearing a leather jacket, gloves, full helmet, boots and long pants. If it were not for the crushing injury I may have just got up and walked away.
Rising to my elbows I saw my leg turned unnaturally, so I knew it was broken immediately. The young woman driving the car as well as other bystanders came to my aid quickly.
I was proud to see I took out the rear window of the car along the way.
The accident happened a block away from a fire station. I was taken to a regional trauma hospital where I had a wait a month for the skin to heal (compound fracture) before surgery was attempted. I was later told amputation was a real possibility.
I have a bolt holding the tops of both bones together just below the knee, and a plate with 8 screws running down the shin which the doctor used to hold the larger chunks of bone in place in the hopes they would knit together.
Years later I had one of the screw removed because the head stuck out under the skin and I kept hitting it on things. When I asked to have it done the doctor replied “whisky, an Exacto knife and an Allen wrench will do the trick.”
:eek:
Errr… thanks. Good to know. :eek:
Wowsers. At least the time I had a fracture missed, it was one of those that’s easy to miss initially (bones not displaced in any way) and the treatment was the same either way (arm in sling). That’s the time I periodically tell about here, where even though my arm was “not broken”, they gave me a scrip for Vicodin (probably because I didn’t ask for it :p).
Wow. Missed this when you posted this, glad I saw it now, guess my weekend plans will have to change ;).
I don’t know that this was “down the middle” but a fellow we knew was travelling on business, in France, when he was hit and knocked down by a bicyclist (who bolted away). Taken to the local ER, diagnosed with a pelvic fracture (at least they spotted the mad cyclist who had gone to the SAME E.R., and they got him taken into custody). Fracture required constant traction, no way to travel home, the airline suggested “you can purchase 4 first-class tickets and we’ll remove the seats for you” at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. Um, no. Fortunately since he was on business (civilian DoD employee) they were able to arrange transport back on a military transport; rough travel but at least he was home (ish - spent about a month in a hospital near here).
So to add to your “don’t do it”, add “but if you do anyway, do it near home!”.
Thanks for the reply, I also have the L shaped cut, it is mostly scabs at the moment, I have been picking at it which I probably shouldnt do :rolleyes:
I am 32 years old and this is the first major break i’ve had. I only went to A&E because I could not put any pressure on it after I fell, I thought it was just a bad sprain since the pain wasnt too bad aslong as I didnt try to walk on it.
They x-rayed my foot then almost straight away they took me from the waiting area in frount of everyone else, not a good sign I thought, I asked have I sprained it then, the nurse laughed a little and said it was a break and one of the worst breaks of that kind she had ever seen. Then I was told I would need to stay in hospital and have surgery on this, this is not what I wanted to hear, I only came in because I thought it was a sprain :smack:
It sounds like you have come away with a lot more nerve damage than me, at first my whole foot was like painful pins and needles, maybe the nerves rerouted themselves.
They gave me some crutches at the hospital so i’m able to get around but very tiring if I need to go any distance like even the corner shop to get some milk.
I too have a weird stabbling pain, it started 2 days ago at the bottom of the foot, it’s like a micro-second of intense pain then it’s gone, i’m hopeing this is a temporary thing and not something I will get when i’m able to walk on it again.
I’ve been told to expect some pain for the rest of my life and arthritis. Also they say it may hurt when it gets cold and that I will never be able to run or dance which I never did anyways so I can live with that.
I’ve been follwing the doctors orders and doing as much exercises as I can do mostly rolling it round, side to side and up and down movements. I’ve not been told when I can start butting weight on it so i’ve kept it off the floor, there was talk about giving me a special boot to wear, i’ll speak to the surgeon more when I have another hospital appointment in 2 weeks.
How long was it until you were weight bearing and did you have much physio to get it working properly again ?