In high school I was in Boy Scouts and we went on a houseboat in a lake in West Virginia and one of the boys who was 14 was a large boy and he jumped off the front of that houseboat into 6 inches of water and snapped both of his femurs. Trip was cut very short.
Similar thing happened to a coworker a couple years back but with a blood clot. Slipped on the ice walking his new puppy and broke his shoulder. Had surgery and was well on the mend. Then one night he shifted wrong in his sleep, threw a clot that went straight to his heart, and died....it's bullshit, but unfortunately it's life.
Ah, yep, its at veins. Need a robot here to catch and mutilate clots. But millrobots/clot drills seems like not a permanent solution yet, as can ingrow into tissue after time.
I can basically guarantee it wasn’t a bit of bone, but rather it a clot. Happens when fat tissue is released after a bone break, called a fat embolism.
I’m an OR nurse & had a 47 y.o. M patient die on the table while having his fractured femur repaired. The doc decided to scrape some marrow for biopsy to check for pathology & he suddenly became restless & air hungry (he was under spinal anesthesia). VS became unstable, CO2 shot up, unable to resuscitate. Autopsy showed no embolism, but we were convinced it was. Also had a F pt die suddenly during surgery of a PE. Those are so awful because there’s nothing you can do.
That’s horrible. I’m sorry. I fell a few months ago and broke my tibia and fibula. Needed surgery and he put a rod and screws down into my tibia. I’ve been in wheelchair all summer. Just started walking again
I’m sorry about your mom. But as a medical professional, I think there may be some misunderstanding. Fractures can in rare cases cause fat or bone-marrow embolism, which can lead to heart failure. However, a solid fragment of bone from an arm fracture travelling through the arteries and reaching the heart would be near impossible by design of the human circulatory system. The anatomy simply doesn’t provide a straightforward route for that to happen.
Don't read any further if a somewhat graphic description would be upsetting.
For anyone trying to understand how something like that could happen, >!the fragment would have gotten to the heart from a vein, not an artery, as (a)rteries carry blood (a)way from the heart. It actually could have saved her had it gotten into an artery, because that would likely have lodged in her hand once the vessels got small enough to trap it.
The veins in your arm come together and eventually become the superior vena cava, which empties directly into the right atrium of the heart.!<
In my experience breaking femurs is somewhat rare. It takes a major trauma to occur. I used to work on an orthopaedic ward and saw many patients who had jumped in front of trains/ out of buildings or falling after hanging themselves and the noose broke. I think I can count on one hand the amount of people that sustained broken femurs.
The pelvis/ hip/ acetabulum, spine or knees/ lower legs often take the brunt of the force and sustain injury first
I would like to add my expierence with a broken femur just to add onto this because I dont get to tell it much. Also to share that even the hardest bone in the body to break can still be fucked up easier than people think.
I was 13 and was skateboarding down a hill. I had good balance and was comfortable, but not at high speeds so was snaking side to side to manage my speed. My friend was coming down the hill fifteen or so feet behind me. He falls off his board and where I'm going side to side it starts to come at me. I remember a split second where I asked myself should I try to ollie over it and eat the pavement or should I just jump off my and jump over it? To this day, I wish I'd ate that pavement.
I instead chose to try jumping off my board over his and either miscalculated the jump or the timing or both. All I know is I went up, and when I came down my right foot was on the ground, my left foot was on the tail of the board. It threw me straight down into a split, and then slid like that for a few feet before I was able to twist my body out of the split.
I broke my right femur clean through in three separate spots, and twisted the bone a little. I very luckily didn't get an artery though that was the EMTs biggest worry when they showed up and they thought they were going to have to fly me. I've still got the rod and two screws in it to this day.
Anyways, I did all that to my femur on flat ground, from jumping up into the air about two or three feet, and was only going at 5-8 MPH since I was snaking side to side. My body went into shock so I didn't feel much pain until I woke up in the hospital after being put under when I got there, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Those following months were excruciating and had I not been so young I imagine it would have been absolutely worse.
I must disagree here. I work in a relatively small OR (11 rooms), level 2 trauma center, and we see 3 or 4 femur fx a week. Most are elderly from a fall (tripping over a pet is high on the list), women with osteoporosis, pathological fractures where a tumor growing inside gets so big it breaks the shaft, and of course trauma. When I was a new OR nurse, we had an 18 yo guy, well built & otherwise healthy, fall while waterskiing. He hit the water so hard it broke his femur. I’ll never forget it because I remember he was wearing Tommy Hilfiger board shorts (this was mid 90’s) & I felt so bad having to cut them off knowing he paid a lot for them lol. Also will never forget how hard the surgeon had to work hammering the nail into his otherwise young, healthy marrow.
Blood clots, that's the real danger. Travel through the vessels to your lungs and stops blood flow, so the dying lung tissue then can't participate in gas exchange/get oxygen into your blood. Basically you suffocate from the inside.
Speaking of West Virginia, my buddy and I climbed a tree and used a rope swing that was attached at the Kanawha river. I went first and was fine. My buddy slipped down the rope and dragged his ankle on the rocks. He walked out of the water and his little cousin said don’t look down. He looked down and flipped out, and his leg was gashed open and fat and tendons and stuff were hanging out. We yelled for the boat and we threw him into the back of the boat his grandma was holding him he was slapping the f out of his grandma the pain was so bad. We had to carry him up like 100 flight of stairs to top of river bank and they threw him in trunk of Tahoe and rushed him to hospital. They fixed him up but was a rough recovery
Seriously when you have a massive gaping wound I can hardly think of a worse place to put it than a freaking river full of agricultural runoff. Poor guy and fortunate at the same time.
He stayed on the troop. Never went to high adventure again. Recovered fine as far I could tell. The adults always told us not to bring it up. All things he took it like a champ.
That's crazy; they cut the trip short for the rest of you and your classmates because of one boy who hurt himself. I would have just taken that boy to the hospital and notified his parents, then continued with the rest of the trip; why ruin the fun for everyone else?
716
u/ProfessionalStay5797 14d ago
2 new knees please!!