Re: Blog: It walks!

'Ace' wrote...>
On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:31:48 +0000, Champ <news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:01:28 +0100, Ace <b.rogers@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Glad to hear you've finally turned the corner. Now just don't overdo
it - there's still a long way to go and significant risks of the
healing process breaking down, as happened to Frag and others of my
acquaintance, sometimes through overuse, somethime through sheer bad
luck.

Oh. Y'know, the consultant didn't mention this at all.

Let's wait for frag to comment, as I can't remember the details, but
ISTR his healing process was going fine for a while, then the bone
just started to crumble around the implants or something.

The first three failures were simply due to the bone not healing fast
enough, combined with the docs telling me I could put 100% of my weight
on the leg too early on.

With no new bone to help support the weight, metal fatigue caused the
first IM nail to snap just above the bottom bolts.

Second IM nail, both the bottom bolts snapped due to metal fatigue (and
the IM nail then moved down, wrecking my knee joint).

Third time, the leg was held solidly in the Iilzarov frame with the
original break being squeezed together. Due to a bad infection the bone
still didn't grow enough to heal in the 9 months I had the frame on.

None of the docs can really tell me why the bone didn't grow for years,
in spite of two bone grafts. They suspect it was because of the trauma
to the surrounding tissue resulting in very poor local blood supply, so
that had to heal fully first, and then the bone could heal.

I just know I had to tell the MK lot not to take the leg off after the
second IM nail broke, and the Nuffield, Oxford lot telling *me* it was
worth putting the plate in (which finally worked) when I was that down
and depressed that it hadn't worked after 9 months in the frame.

But that x-ray look really good. Remember that as you walk along your
leg gets upto 150% of body weight through it because of inertia and
mass, and never, *ever* twist or put large bending forces through the
bad leg, cause both of those two are extremely good at breaking new
bone. Simple compression weight through the length of the leg is good.

--
fragmented
.

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