I fell snowboarding yesterday, and managed to land on the protruding branch nub of a log that was almost entirely concealed by not much snow. After yelling for a while I felt good enough to stand and then to move and I snowboarded for a few more hours, but a bit more cautiously than normal. I was fortunate to have the impact on the meat of my biggest muscle, so while I have a big ol’ bruise and it’s a bit sensitive, there doesn’t seem to be any serious damage.
But that made me wonder. How much risk is it to go out again and potentially fall again on that same bruise. Obviously it’s not very pleasant to do so (it’s not very pleasant to sit down at a normal pace at the moment), and that pain is my body’s way of telling me to stop doing that. And at some point if I keep hitting that spot it will translate into something worse. But I have no intuition for whether I should take it really easy or whether going out this weekend and maybe falling on or near that same spot again is going to be no big deal as long as the pain isn’t too bad.
I’d say give it a rest. I don’t know the answer to your question but I hurt and badly bruised my knee and shin once falling down. A week or so later smacked the same shin on an iron cart. and to look at it now almost a year later the mark left behind it looks like tissue damage.
One can split muscle fibers, sort of a hernia effect. I currently have a peristomal hernia where the large intestine is keeping my small intestines inside.
I suppose one might add with your huge bruised area that if you did split the fibers along the grain, as long as there isn’t something that can slide out through the split you should be fine. If you start having issues thaat last more than a week or so head to a doctor
One of the resident doctors will chime in. All I’ve got is my history of martial arts injuries and my often ignorant response to them.
Everyone’s body is different in how it reacts to trauma. Some folk bruise earlier than others, and sometimes the severity of bruising does not seem to relate to the pain or perceived severity of impact. But bruising is a sign that injury occurred and healing is taking place, so it generally is a good idea to allow/encourage that to happen, and to try to avoid immediate re-injury of the same spot.
When I ski, I do not frequent areas where there are protruding branches. I’d suggest you are fine to go boarding this weekend, but take it a little easy and stay out of the trees. That’s just common sense - not something I always exercised in my MA days.
I’ve had a thigh contusion from a football impact – I couldn’t walk at all for a day or two, and then had a pronounced limp for a week or so, and then a slight limp and pain until it healed after 4 or 5 weeks. But there was no treatment aside from ice and pain meds.
I’m not particularly worried that my current injury is something major. It’s a big ugly bruise, but it’s already feeling better, and ice and OTC painkillers seem to be working.
It just made me realize that I didn’t really know how such an injury might progress if subject to further impact.
IANAD. If you have trauma and get a bruise, it might be just a bruise. But a severe muscle injury can cause rhabdomyolysis. If you see what appears to be blood in your urine get to an emergency room. This is not typical for something like falling when snowboarding but occurs in more severe crushing injuries. Anyway, that’s when you cross the line between a bruise and serious tissue damage.
For anyone curious about the outcome, I did end up seeing a doctor about a week and a bit after the injury and he basically said that if it seemed to be getting better and wasn’t causing me mobility issues, it was likely fine. He also mentioned blood in urine as a warning sign. I did not experience that.
I did take about a week off of snowboarding, and my first day back on the mountain I cut short because the injury was getting uncomfortable. My bruise ended up extending over 24" long and about 12" wide. It was sore for about 2 weeks and then stiff for about a month after that. No lasting effects that I can see.
In this article you can see pictures of Cody Rhodes, a professional wrestler. These were taken following a detachment of his pectoral muscle. Cody was medically cleared to wrestle shortly after that injury because doctors determined that it wouldn’t cause any further harm. Frankly, he, like most professional wrestlers, is nuts. That was clear before the injury. But the company wouldn’t have let it happen without clearance from a doctor to cover their own asses from a fiscal bruise like that. So the OP could have gone back to the mountain right away and picked up some cred for gutting it out. Oh, but perhaps he should remember professional wrestling is fake, mountains fight for real.
and to look at it now almost a year later the mark left behind it looks like tissue damage.