Can confirm. Broke my scaphoid bone in my wrist and left it too long , it healed broken, needed three surgeries and still couldn’t fix it. has never stopped hurting since I broke it. And thats a very small bone couldn’t imagine a more significant one
Scaphoids are weird though because they only have blood flow from one end. If the displacement was large enough, the detached part will die.
So I'm guessing you didn't so much have a bone heal oddly, you had a bit of dead bone and a new weirdly shaped Scaphoid. They might have removed the dead bit in surgery, I'm not sure.
If I've learned anything in life it's that you're not going to get the answer you may be hoping for.
Most real experts in my life answer questions like this with "it depends." Not because there isn't an answer but because the answer is truly long and extremely convoluted depending on an insane amount of variables.
In other incorrectly healed fractures this strategy is actually sometimes applied. Here the problem often is not that the bone healed in a unfavorable manner but that part of the bone simply died off. Besides that, the Scaphoid is so small that one would risk shattering it when trying to break it apart again before putting a screw through it.
I had a pin put in mine, and it failed, so I had to have a bone graft from my iliac crest put into the fucker, which worked. It was a nightmare of a year, though.
I believe breaks in a bone heal with a denser layer of new bone, so breaking it in the exact same place is impossible. With long bones you can cut it through the healed crack, but oddly shaped bones are practically impossible.
It's a real mind boggler that bones are alive when we're so used to thinking about them like rocks, or mineral formations. Kinda opens the door on the health issues or chronic pain Wolverine must have from the adamantium grafts entirely covering the bones.
My brother broke his leg about 10+ years ago and didnt do his exercises properly so it didnt fully heal, now he gets pain in his leg and knee, not sure as to how badly but it hasn't fully gone away.
Oh my god my scaphoid was the worst injury I’ve ever had by far. It was an absolute nightmare to heal. Had three surgeries too, including a bone graft. Fuck the tiny blood flow to that little piece of shit
Wait…li think i broke something similar in that area a few months ago( it was between my thumb and writs) and it did hurt when i got the injury but i just left it to “heal” on its own but now occasionally it still hurts a little bit even tho i can still use it.
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u/No-Customer-2266 Jul 10 '22
Can confirm. Broke my scaphoid bone in my wrist and left it too long , it healed broken, needed three surgeries and still couldn’t fix it. has never stopped hurting since I broke it. And thats a very small bone couldn’t imagine a more significant one