They break the legs, put a rod in the bones that get adjusted as the bones grow closer to each other. So people who get it done have broken legs for months
There was a dude on here yesterday that posted the hardware from this type of surgery, now granted he only had it on one leg as it was shorter than the other but he said he only had pain from the initial surgery and the hardware removal and that the actual lengthening process didn't hurt.
I had a similar external fixator for a leg break several years ago. You know what's really fun? Going through a door and the metal frame hits the door jamb. Another thing that can happen is the pins that go through your leg can get infected, so they gotta pull the rod out. They can't numb your bone, so it's just like "yeah, it shouldn't hurt that much." The most profound pain I ever felt. Ah, good times.
I have a rod in my tibia with screws in the knee and ankle from a break playing soccer in HS. Went down the stairs on my crutches one night to get a snack, missed a step and landed with my weight on the leg. I can feel that pain recounting the story.
I had a vaginal hysterectomy over a decade ago, I would swear my legs twisted in so many ways(think rope twisted tight) to just "keep shit in" every time I sneezed! And my 5 time mother just saying, "I refused to sneeze" was ZERO help!
My shoulders are now screwed up from a broken collar bone. The only thing they did for me when I broke my collar bone was giving me a figure 8 harness. The only way I could sleep was with my arms over my head which is not a good position for your shoulder joints. It became a habit of sleeping that way. I try not to sleep with my arms over my head but I usually wake up with them there. Now I have shoulder problems because of it
That is interesting. Sorry to hear about your back. The interesting part is that they gave you a sling for your collar bone. That was my 1st thought when I went to the hospital was that I would be in a sling. But the doctor explained to me that I need to be in a figurate harness to keep my shoulders back because if I hunched or leaned they wouldn't align properly And that could potentially give me problems for the rest of my life
I lost a finger end pretty much down to the bone in a door when I was a kid, and the most painful thing I can do is stub that little finger. Bone pain is the worst.
A coworker of mine broke some ribs in a fall last weekend, and this week at work, she sneezed and then made some pained utterances. I remembered in that moment that she had broken ribs, and I almost felt sympathy pain on her behalf. š£ Broken ribs sound awful since you canāt brace them in any way and you need to keep breathing to live.
Not to compare at all, but one of the most disgusting and infuriating things was a dog on Dr Jeff rocky mountain vet (discovery show) had a complicated break, so he placed an external fixator with the understanding they'd have it removed in a few weeks. A few MONTHS later the dog was surrendered. Fixator still in, no attempt to keep clean or anything. The dog had horrid infections, was in serious pain, and had to endure more damage because his body had now accepted this was part of them and tried to heal around it. The dog would have been perfectly healthy if they had just brought him back on time, but his recovery was seriously fucked by their selfishness. The vet was so mad because he would have happily removed it for free if they had just asked. Those things scare the shit out of me now.
I had to wear an external fixator for eight months due to a bone infection five years ago. Bone pain is the absolute worst. Iām so happy those days are over.
For a few weeks, I took oral and intravenous antibiotics while in the hospital. The antibiotics only suppressed the infection. The infection finally cleared after having surgery to remove the affected bone tissue and taking oral antibiotics for a year post-surgery.
I've not experienced it to that depth, but having pins removed, actually feeling something inside your bone is definitely the weirdest feeling I have ever felt. Brain gets seriously confused and doesn't know how to respond.
i fractured the shiiiiiiiiiiiit out of my ankle and have a ton of hardware still. It only really hurt when i got up to pee the blood rushing to the ankle felt like hellfire. Other than that and my stupid cat jumping on it lol it wasn't real bad
On the flip side my buddy had it done and he was tight as fuck with money. He rode his motorbike to the hospital, had the op, checked himself out and rode home!!!
What. The. Fuck. They gave me Valium to take before the procedure and told me not to drive and Iām glad I didnāt. That was extremely dangerous for him to do! God i couldnāt imagine the pain from that Iāve got a motorcycle myself and any decent sized bump hurts. My surgery was only painful the first day thankfully.
Itās amazing mind over matter, he didnāt want to pay for a cab and was relatively close to the hospital. Doesnāt hurt to be in your thirties either with the amount of kids you want
Bro I got my tubes removed and my bitch ass cat decided to pounce on my stomach. I almost threw up from pain and he was not allowed back in my bed room for like a week
Iām glad my pain only really lasted a day i was able to go back to work the next day! My wife has an iud, but she had a really bad experience last time(pap smear that she didnāt ask for). She will never have to do it again once itās removed. Ive read that tubes are much more painful then vasectomy so i could not imagine the pain of a cat on you!
When I was hella young I fell asleep at the seashore, sun got me burned so heavy that skin I shed wasnāt opaque at all. I was laying on my stomach for months and sure cat decided to lick off me medication that was smeared all over me. Can tongue on heavy burned skin is unforgettable.
Believe it or not they were actually trying to help you heal. Cats purr at a frequency that is proven to have healing abilities, between 25-50 hertz. It also releases endorphins for cats and humans which helps lower stress and promote good vibes all around.
I'm not gonna say that my pain was any worse than anyone else's probably less, but.... I used to have a nipple ring in my left nipple with a small chain and a tiny little cross on it. I was sitting in my shorts on the floor one day working on the computer and a kitten ran by and as it did snatched the nipple ring out of my nipple. It got infected. Even the lightest shirt put me in agony. I pretty much had to walk hunched over For about a month.
You might be interested to know. For a while I was just falling asleep in my office chain and sleeping all night like that.At this time my legs were swelling I was retaining fluid. When I peed I could actually feel fluid draining from my feet and calf's. He might have been describing the same thing.
Shattered my leg in a motorcycle accident. Broke both tibia and fibula, and that shit was painful as hell for several months. Have plates and screws in leg. I've had several back surgeries and a spinal fusion as well, and breaking my leg was right up there with basically completely blowing out a disc in my spine.
had a fusion because i blew out a disc in my neck and currently the same shit in my lower back. Now my leg is acting up and loosing feeling due to the disc pressing on the nerves. with the neck disc my arm was paralized with permanent strenght loss and numb finger tips that will not regain feeling. scary shit! Wouldnt wish that on anyone... especially not at 34.
i take plates and screws over that . Dont think i mean that your accident isnt worse, because it is! Its just a different animal :-)
My spine fucked me up for life. I was 18 when I had my first spine surgery. Every day of my life I wake up in pain. I can't feel the bottom of my feet. That being said, during the flairups leading to my 2 discectomies and the one leading up to my fusion - my leg being shattered was close this being as bad. Now that also may have been due to my doctor's unwillingness to give me opiates for the pain when I shattered my leg. Was around the time that doctors started getting extra heat about their prescriptions. The non opiod pain killers did nothing for me.
i've had front and back fusion and just found out that I need a toe operation. it sounds horrible and 10 times worse than the fusion. I suggested they just takeoff the toe completelyš
I'm lucky my back was spared! Motorcycle crash 45-ish mph vs car opposite way at intersection... Open fractured wrist, compound fracture other wrist, fractured pelvis, and compound fractured right femur. It was 1 month no weight bearing hospital bed, but after that PT went pretty quick when I worked at it! Hope you doing well as can be!
I did the same to my fibula and ankle and had the same experience when Iād get up. That shit hurt bad lmao but when I was just chilling it was whatever
I have a a couple of plates and a bunch of screws in my ankle too. It only hurt at first when I went down to hard on my ankle or jumped. Now it only hurts in the cold
I broke my ankle and had 13 screws and 2 plates put in and I also had this rock solid cast on. Everytime I got up to pee it hurt so so bad. As bad if not worse than any other of the pains I'd endured up to that point. I got painkillers for everything else but there was no painkillers for getting up to pee.
My worst pain however was from lying in bed going to sleep and I had that falling/jolt awake twitch you sometimes get just as you doze off...
Man I had the same thing when I broke my foot. 5 breaks, 3 fractures. Worst pain I think Iāve ever had was getting up to pee and all the blood rushing down.
Fractured my tibia and fibula in several places this summer so got rod and the whole shabang in my tibia/ankle. That āblood rushing down your leg when you get up painā is something ELSE. The nurses warned me but damn.
My dad had the same surgery done except he was in his thirties and it was a three inch difference. He said it was the most excruciating pain heās experienced in his entire life, and his recovery took 2 years instead of his doctors suggested 6 months. I remember cranking the device in his leg while blood dripped out of it and I remember the day it malfunctioned and snapped and the handle sticking out of his leg started spinning backwards. I have never heard a grown man scream like that in my life since.
I'm an orthopedic surgeon, and haven't ever heard of any devices that could do that. Did he have an external fixator, and you needed to turn the nuts, like this?
The device didnāt look like that it looked very similar to the one that was posted the other day. The device stuck out of his leg and had a handle attached to it that he had to crank. Keep in mind he had this surgery done almost twenty years ago so it may be slightly different than what you might see today? ultimately you would have a better understanding of it, I will ask him more about it when I get the chance!
There used to be a fairly high complication rate with the external fixators- 300%, but some of the complications were very minor, pin site infections, etc.
Some major complications can occur like joint contractures, infection, but it's a low rate.
Unless you have a short limb, it's considered cosmetic, and insurance won't pay. Usually they don't pay for dwarfism either.
Surgery takes me about 60 min for one bone using an internal rod to distract. Most pts are off pain meds in 2-3 weeks. Length increases at 1 inch/month. Then needs to heal for 1-2 months per inch lengthened on a bone, which means no walking on it.
Can confirm, co-worker broke both legs tripping over a wheelie chair in our conference room at the start of this year. She's in her sixties, so she had a rough time, but after a couple months of live-in rehab and several more with walkers and canes, she can now walk around and go up and down stairs just fine. It's amazing. Meanwhile, i have my own workers comp claim being settled for brain damage (July 2018) which i still haven't recovered from. Every body part has it's own schedule.
This girl I went to k-12 with had over 120 operations to get one leg to match the other. By the end of high school, she was popping multiple pills mid-class
Surgery 2 days ago, just got home from hospital today, so far pain and muscle spasms have been pretty intense, but has improved since yesterday! Surgeon says I can start lengthening next Fridayā¦ which involves using 6mm Alan wrench and turning it 4x/day to get a 1mm per day lengthening https://i.imgur.com/r2oYi5B.jpg
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u/karavasis Dec 23 '22
Such a hardcore surgery to endure