beckwall, they told you that you’d feel “normal” in six weeks, after total hip replacement?
That sounds pretty optimistic. My hip broke in early May, and the surgeon said it’d likely be December before it got back to “normal”. That’s 9 months, just to adapt to a rod and screws.
Cheez_Whia, I can relate. I love to sit with one leg under the other. That’ll probably never happen again. The x-rays are cool, aren’t they?
The weirdest thing was early on, when I accidentally put some weight on the bad leg, and there was nothing there. It was like the leg didn’t exist.
Not me, but my brother did. He broke his femur when he was about 14. He had a rod put into his thigh. A year or so later, he had surgery to remove it. This was done for a couple of reasons.
The younger you are, the better an idea it is to have rods removed when the bone heals. Senior citizens are likely to be more traumatized by the repeat surgery, and young people are more likely to be in future accidents which could cause the rod to be bent- and therefore harder to remove later.
The rod which was inserted was too long. He thought he could feel the muscle in his hip catching on the rod. This was annoying- but not the end of the world.
Didn’t want to get caught by airline security metal detectors(though he flew with it in and had no problems)
The doctor who inserted the rod liked to remove rods(in cases like my brother). We moved between the time of the insertion and the time for removal- and I think the new doctor was not quite reluctant, but certainly not so eager to remove the rod.
He’s had no problems since then- apart from having legs of slightly but significantly different lengths- wears a lift in his shoe, has to tell persons fitting him for tuxes to make the pant legs different lengths, etc.
He was surprised and irritated by how long he had to stay on crutches after having the rod removed.
I’ve got titanium rods and screws in my lumbar spine as a result of a fusion. It doesn’t bother me at all, so I’ll probably leave them in. I’m a year and a half post-fusion.
What DOES bother me is the area of my hip where they took the bone for the graft. That aches all the time.
I had a grotesquely broken arm (I don’t know if it’s a compound fracture if it doesn’t break the skin, but I was laying on a wrestling mat. My wrist and my elbow were flat, but the middle of my left forearm was tented up - you could get three fingers under the break). As a result, I have two plates - one on each bone, with a total of nine screws holding them on.
I don’t set off metal detectors, but I’m a pretty reliable barometer.
I have two staples and a pin in my right knee from a car accident 25 years ago. I lost some flexibility–it was years before I could bend that knee completely–and I always call it “my bad knee,” but for the most part it’s okay. The worst is that it sometimes gives me a very painful twinge if I go downstairs too quickly, or if I accidentally twist or bang it, it can swell up and give me more trouble than a healthy knee would.
I have a steel plate in place of my tibia (or is it fibula, I can never remember, the narrow bone on the outside of your leg below the knee). The bone completely shattered and nothing is there but the plate pinned to the remaining ends.
The talus (that one I do remember, it’s the little rounded bone on the inside of your ankle) has two bolts. During the same break in which I shattered my tibia or fibula, the talus broke in half and pushed out some, so it’s held back by the bolts.
The breaks were over two years ago, and I do still feel the two bolts. The ankle part of my legs aches a wee bit from time to time, especially after a lot of exercise, but overall it’s fine.
My metal was intended to be permenant though. The only one I got removed was the long bolt through the back of the ankle that held my achilles tendon in place until it healed.
They don’t set off metal detectors or anything either, so there’s that.
A plate and four screws in my left tibia. That’s my good knee, now. It doesn’t set off the detectors or tell the weather. The bone guy x-rayed it a couple of times after and was pleased that the screws showed no sign of working out, so I guess that can be a problem. But I never got any sensation from the metal.
As to the six weeks - with my surgery six weeks was the time before I could put any weight on that leg, certainly not the time back to normality. Even with weight on the leg, it was crutches for about 3 months.
