My brother broke both his elbows in a freak bicycle accident. (He’s been clumsy since he was born.) The doctor put him in a pair of slings. How are slings preferable to casts in this situation?
Man, not making light of the event, but that had to hurt like a @#%@#@#$@#.
WAG, IANAD etc. A sling will allow some movement, whereas a cast will fix the elbows into a single position and risk the healing process causing the joints to seize.
As an aside: OOOOWWWWWWWWW!!! Poor guy.
Yeah, I’ve had a bunch of clients put in slings instead of casts for similar injuries, seems like SOP these days.
Six year old boy that my oldest is pals with busted his elbow (and assorted other arm parts) the first day of school this year. He’s in a cast for the broken parts but they had pins in for his elbow to keep everything together.
Last week (about three weeks post injury) he had the cast off for removal of the pins and then it was put back on for the rest of the bones to heal up.
My husband had a hairline fracture in his elbow following a freak bike accident too, about 3 years ago (he only sprained the other elbow!) They put it in a cast in the ER, sent him to a specialist a week later, and the “bone doctor” was going to take the cast off because it was better to let the elbow heal with a certain range of motion, to prevent it from seizing up. Unfortunately for my freak-accident husband, it wasn’t until they removed the cast that he noticed that his wrist was hurting too… he had severely dislocated his wrist but the pain from the broken elbow (and his other injuries) had masked it. So the “bone doctor” put him back in a half cast (removable, so he could move his elbow around a few times a day, but still support the wrist), and ferried him off to yet another specialist, the “joint doctor” a week later. Turns out, poor hubby needed surgery to repair the dislocation, so the JD left him in the half cast . Two weeks after that, he had the surgery, then spent the next two months with his arm in a full cast, all the way past his elbow, because moving the elbow could move the pin in his wrist. To make it worse, because of the way the wrist needed to heal, his arm was turned palm upwards, so he couldn’t even use the free fingers to hold things! Those two months in a cast screwed up his arm… it took 6 months of physiotherapy for him to be able to fully turn his wrist around palm-down without turning the rest of the arm (and even then, he’s maybe only at about 90-95%) and about 3-4 months before he could fully extend his arm from the elbow (again, he’s missing a few degrees with his arm outstretched).
It was a long, and very painful recovery, not to mention frustrating! He still holds his arm a little awkwardly as a result, when he’s relaxed, his hand will be turned palm up rather than the sideways position most people do.
In case anyone’s interested, the rest of his injuries involved badly scraped knees, palms and face, as well as a need for 6 or 7 stitches in his chin (right beside his previous bike accident chin scar!) The sun glasses he was wearing at the time were actually mirrored safety glasses, and they were completely scratched up - considering the gashes on his cheek, the shape at the top of that near his eye and the damage to the glasses, I’m convinced that if he wasn’t wearing them, he would have had eye damage. Despite all this, he walked the bike back home (the accident happened just at the street corner), into the apartment building, up the elevator, into the apartment (scaring the crap out of me, because I was just stepping out of the shower and didn’t expect anyone to be coming in!) He kept walking around, dripping blood all over the floor. We both called in at work, then spent 4 hours in the ER getting him all checked out. They missed the wrist because they only took X-rays of his elbows, because that’s where all the pain was - he was actually using his hand at the time.
Oh, and when he first came out of the surgery, he gives me a goofy grin, and says in a really doped up voice “Hi! They gave me MORPHINE!”
"My husband had a hairline fracture in his elbow following a freak bike accident too"
Are you talking about a bicycle or a motorcycle? Seems like a lot of damage for a bicycle.
It was a bicycle accident. He was coasting down a low incline hill, going maybe 30-35 km/hr and noticed at the last minute that the light at the intersection he was approaching had turned red. He “slammed” on the brakes, but this was a new bike, and the brakes were very powerful. Flipped head first over the handlebars and broke his fall with his right arm mostly, but also his left (hence the sprain in that elbow).
The thing about my dear husband, though, is although he isn’t particularly clumsy, he does have the ability to hurt himself in ridiculous ways with respect to the type of accident he had. About a year ago, he stubbed his toe on a suitcase that he was emptying after a trip, walked past it to put something away, came back and stubbed his toe again, and broke it. Last winter, he slipped on a bit of ice, felt fine, but a few days later had incredible pain in his knee that required several weeks of physiotherapy to fix (thank gods for unlimited physio via my work benefits!) A mild contact burn when he was cooking has resulted in a pretty ugly brown scar. That sort of thing. It’s his superhero ability - Amazing Injury Man!
This is exactly the same situation my brother was in. Going fast, downhill, hits brakes hard (to avoid an oncoming car), brand new bike, flipped headfirst over the handlebars.