Clavicle Error - Broken Collarbone

Currently post-op after an SPD unclipped 5 weeks ago. After being scooped up by an ambulance and taken to a&e i was sent up the road with a sling and a fracture clinic appointment. was x-rayed and told to keep it in the sling and go back in 6 weeks. ended up heading back to the clinic early as i had a winged scapula and a lot of back pain. they decided to operate and i was in the next day getting it put back in place and plated. sore, but things feel much better already.

worst thing has been getting the train to and from work. i've had some prick sit down on my slinged arm.

Fell off at the start of August and smashed up the end of my clavicle. Slept on it but it wasn't right so I went to the Whittington the day after. Thy sent me home in a sling which I was happy with as it didn't seem too bad.

After 20 days it was healing but still sitting in the wrong place (top section if the x-ray is after 20 days), back was sore when I let my arm dangle at my side. Spoke with the consultant and had surgery the next day. They fitted a tightrope to pull the bone back into place. Looks like two little buttons on the x-ray. Instantly felt an improvement. Everything looked better and the back pain was gone.

A month after that and I'm in physio. They've removed all physical restrictions from me so I can finally get back on the bike. Still need to work with the physio to get my strength and full movement back. Thy think with the tightrope in place I should get almost as good movement as I had before.

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Good healing to you both!

The Whittington continues to provide a good service!

Cheers!

Was at the physio yesterday (3wks post-op) and I'm now sling free. Feels great. Muscles are a bit sore from being used for the first time in ages, but it feels fine apart from that.
Allowed to go on a static bike and start back with legwork at the gym. I've got 5kg to put back on that I've lost since the crash.

Just dislocated my clavicle from AC socket yesterday, Grade 2. Doc says 2 month recovery :(
Sore but useable at the moment. Can't raise my arm in front of me though. Just really annoying.

I did that, was fucking painful, and I couldn't take T-shirts off, or pull up my trousers properly, I ditched the sling after about a month.

Yeah it's taking off t shirts, also doing up your trousers! A month with the sling? Crap.
Did you completely heal though?

It's still a bit wonky TBF, and it's sometimes gives me pain on the bike when it's cold. Although now that I've just looked at the chart it was definitely a grade III, it was also the single most painful injury I've had.

Did that a few years ago. They sent me home in a sling for the weekend but the specialist got rid of it first thing Monday morning and gave me a few simple exercises to do. Month off work was a bore, especially as I was not getting paid, but I was already doing turbo sessions and trying to use the arm as normally as possible.

Mostly it's good now, the Doctors said I could do everything after the injury I had been able to do before, but too much hammering, or chopping wood with an axe ends up giving me a couple of days of slight discomfort.

Man I really hope it doesn't hang around. I do a lot of overhead olympic lifting, won't go well together.
Seeing the physio tomorrow morning so we shall see what the prognosis is.

You can always have the op to put it back again. So far I have chosen not to and it's been three years. Try to get out of the sling, I went back to see the specialist after a month and pretty much had totally normal movement, just a bit of weakness and some discomfort from the skin stretching and the various tendons and stuff having to work around, rather than over, the collarbone.

So ive been back on the bike now for a couple months but recently its starting to ache but strangley not where it broke. I've got my last check up + xrays tomorrow and well let them know. I think I will get a new bag with wider shoudler straps. I would have thought it would have stopped hurting now or should I just have a cup of concrete?

So I got the news today that I will need surgery as the bones haven't joined which explains the pain. I'm a bit pissed off as they have gone from saying they wouldn't operate and to many risks to now I need it. I could be 5 months post op of they had done it at the start. So I either get the op or put up with a constant ache.

I'm now wondering if there are ways that I could manage the pain rather than get the operation. I don't like that they said there will be numbness and wearing a bag would be uncomfortable etc.
How have you all been after the op? Also did you keep the plate in other ot removed later?

I don't regret getting the plate at all, especially given the pointy shape I would have been left with if it'd been left to knit on its own. I didn't have a choice with having my plate taken out, as it was a hook plate that restricted my movement.

I have a small patch of numbness on the front of my shoulder joint about 3x3cm. I don't really have any discomfort with bags, but all of our shoulders must have ended up slightly different.

Mine isn't tenting instead it's a chunk at the end that hasn't joined which is causing the pain. How long did you have yours in for? How long before you could get back in a bike? I missed out cycling over the whole of summer from the initial accident so now I don't want to start the year in the same way and end up being off the bike for a few more months.

Had the plate in from mid October to Late February. For me, it was the muscle bruising that was the most painful. So in October I had to wait for the deep bruising of the crash to subside as well as the surgery, but the removal was much easier.

I think it was about 3 weeks before I rode to work in Oct/Nov. Was much easier when they were removing it. I had the surgery on Friday and rode to work on Monday, though I remember thinking twice about that as it had been pretty painful going over bumps.

Perhaps yours would be speedier because you're beyond that initial crash damage, it'd just be the surgery to deal with.

I had a non-union on my left collar-bone. Mid shaft, complete separation, unstable. I think I was on my twelfth opinion and several years down the line before it was acknowledged and by that stage I was suffering all sorts of issues. Rotator cuff problems, neck problems, shoulder blade instability. I would lose the vision in one eye at times because of compression of a nerve.
The only purpose physio served was to temporarily help me with the secondary injuries, the pain from the collar bone itself was minor, but I was losing function all over the place which could never be fixed by compensating for a non functioning shoulder. I didn't realise at the time but my life was also dominated by the pain of these secondary issues.
By the time the non-union was accepted in the UK one part of the collar bone was dead and I had to have the lateral end removed and the shoulder reconstructed using an artificial ligament to bridge the gap to a reshaped shoulder blade. Rehabilitation took about ten years, part of this was dealing with problems caused by the initial injury and the period of non-union, part of the rehabilitation was dealing with a shoulder that now worked 'different'.

A few years later I had my right collar bone shattered. Plate and screws - piece of piss. I have very little body fat and I'm quite small so the plate and screws were very prominent. I didn't have a problem with bags and harnesses but occasionally, unavoidably, I would receive a blow on the collar bone which didn't hurt as such but was very, very wrong in a PTSD flashback kind of way. I had the plate removed - even more of a piece of piss. This break wasn't much more hassle for me than a normal collar bone fracture that heals without any problem.

10 years! I shouldnt complain as much then!

Cheers all for the advise looks like I'll roll with the dices and see how it goes. I'll just get my fitness up as much as possible in the mean time and hope that there isn't much downtime.

Fractured mine in 3bits last Monday in Madeira at 4pm, by 11pm I already had the plate and screws in place (thanks to the amazing guys and insurance of the MTB company). I was even able to take the fly back the very day after. (Questionable choice of mine..)

Now I'm in London and I can feel it healing pretty quickly, that's why I trying to get an orthopedic to look at it to confirm it's fine. However the appointment I got at the UCLH Fracture Clinic is for the 18th of January, could anyone recommend anywhere where they'd see me sooner?

I can read from all the stories here that in general they are a bit slack about being proactive, so I want to be on top of it, even if it means having to pay out of my pocket.

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Are the staples out yet?

Will be this Friday

See if you can get some advice while that is happening, i.e. where to go if you suffer discomfort; what signs to look out for regarding infection and complications.

Ask what sort of timescale you should be looking at for pain management and rehabilitation. You probably won't get definitive answers about when stuff should happen but you'll have an idea as to whether that Fracture Clinic appointment is too long to wait, when you should seek help if you are worried about something and whether you need to seek more specific advice about recovery.

If everything proceeds smoothly I wouldn't expect much to happen in those few weeks and I had similar waits after surgery. You are already well ahead of the curve compared to someone referred to a FC, then referred to a surgeon, then waiting for surgery, then waiting for a follow up FC appointment and then physio.

Good luck!

Is it standard to get staples?

Im dealing with UCLH and I had to wait about 2.5 - 3 weeks to see them so they do have a wait but they are actually pretty quick when your there. Looks lilke they have prob booked you in that date as there isnt much apart from healing that can happen.

Not sure why staples rather then stitches, I believe I got them because I had to fly back less than 24h after surgery.

I guess I got something more also because of some Christmas break or such. Still, that's 6weeks away, according to the surgeon I was supposed to be back to normal in 2months