Lingering pain after a broken bone (months and years)

You mention one doctor. Have you tried another?

 

Have you been to see a physiotherapist?
Fishheadjoe

 

Yes. I injured a knuckle in a shop accident (the boss modified a tool by removing a safety stop on a bolt cutter), which resulted in a painful mass that lingered for years. I had actually forgotten about this, but around 2010, it was a cause of daily stress and concern about long-term pain. I guess I was lucky.

 

Around 1982, I shattered the bone in my left thumb. It was in a splint for several months and finally healed straight. 35 years later, I still get shooting pain every so often (yes, I can tell when it's going to rain or get cold), but nothing excruciating or unbearable---it's more of an annoyance these days.

 

Try a Dr of Osteopathy.

 

After constant pain after over ten years post leg smash up...knee to ankle...I had Tib Fib and foot Osteomy...plates and screws and piece of hip bone removed two years ago....still in constant pain....only things helps temporarily are pain killers....Sorry

 

I broke a big toe. It was visibly bent sideways. Still is. It took a few years before the pain and stiffness fully ended.

 

In 1966 I was hit from behind by a car and nearly lost my left leg mid-shin. It was 24 hours before I got circulation back, and they did a bone graft because one inch of the bones in the leg were shattered in pieces. I spent 6 months in a cast, and I still have a 6-inch steel plate in that shin. Took years to get nearly full travel back in my ankle, but the leg works fine and I even figured out how to ski, even though the scar is right where my ski boot hits (I made a curved, padded aluminum plate that is taped to my leg.)

99% of the time the leg is fine, but if I get a sudden hard push against the shin from either side, I get a sharp pain there and may go down. Skiing doesn't provide this push, so I still ski a couple of times a year. Hey, I live in Colorado and at age 67 it's nice to prove I can still ski!

My advice - based on experience - will sound weird. But my suggestion is to figure out what movement or exercise causes pain, and then carefully but firmly DO that movement or exercise. The goal is to work through it and familiarize your body with that movement so that if nothing else, the pain doesn't get worse. Any time we have pain we tend not to do whatever causes that pain (which is actually not a bad idea) but over time, avoiding movement or exercise can make the pain worse.

My left ankle doesn't flex as far as the right one; it never will. But every day, I do stretches that flex that ankle as far as is physically possible. It often pops and grinds during this process. When I'm done with the stretches, I push off of that foot and ankle to get upright. It hurts, but the more I do it, the less it hurts, the less it pops, and the more travel I keep in that ankle.

To Bob, the OP: keep doing whatever PT is right for your feet. If it's stretches, try and do them every day. It will make it better 20 years down the road.

Edit: Exercise it, but judiciously! Don't hurt yourself doing it.

 

Back injury 25 years ago. Very painful when the weather changes ( barometric pressure).
Has not let up in all that time.
Pain killers and ice pack at night.

 

walking around for any length of time kills me...and even more so if I have to carry something.....considering amputation

 

I didn't break my foot but I did have fusion surgery on my left foot three years ago July 5. Two months in a cast and another two in a boot. It was tender for almost a year and didn't regain full confident strength for almost two. My doc gave me a prescription for an orthopedic insert for my shoe that seemed to help a lot... but yeah, he told me foot injuries are lingering. So many small bones and tendons and being so far away from the heart the blood flow isn't the best for healing to take place. It's been three years and probably only the last six months or so that I felt completely healed. Running, jumping and all..... Probably not what you want to hear.

 

Ice pack helps my knee after repair surgery.

 

Sounds like a soft tissue thing. Maybe nerve damage, but I would lean toward soft tissue. I know planter fasciitis (spelled wrong I'm sure) is incredibly painful and comes and goes. Permanent damage may cause you to be more prone to inflammation which can trigger pain. Best guess.

 

In my late teens I broke the metacarpal bone right behind my left middle finger. They put me in a cast to immobilize from my wrist forward, but about a week later I soaked it and cut it off. To this day I experience random pain around the old break.

Some years later I broke the proximal on the same finger on my right hand, just behind the joint with the middle bone. They put it in one of those flat aluminum braces and taped it up real good and sent me home. I put up with it for a few weeks before I had to take it off. It was sore for quite a while but had apparently done well enough to heal straight after I took the brace off. About year after it quit hurting so much I started losing mobility in that finger. My sister opened it up and removed a decent sized cyst that had grown down close to the bone close to the joint and was apparently causing some interference with movement. Since she got that thing out I've not had any pain or loss of movement.

 

I'm dealing with something similar, although at the Achilles - Xray could barely pick it up, but I've got calcification of the tendon happening. Seriously painful almost all the time, moreso after sitting for a while or after being active. Technical term is tendonopathy. Could be you have some sort of tendonopathy at the plantar causing pain?

My current treatment (third stage... after weeks of RICE, then months of PT) is now extracorporeal shockwave therapy. The treatment can be uncomfortable but it's made a positive difference for me that RICE and PT didn't.

 

I have a torn ankle tendon on my bad leg side...surgeon was supposed to replace it,,,but just scoped bone around it...Ugh....No help

 

In 1969 I had a motorcycle accident that pretty much destroyed my right knee. They did a very good job of fixing it, but the doctor's warning that I'd eventually get arthritis in it came true about 5 years ago. Back then he couldn't have foreseen that knee replacements would be very common now. I went about five years with increasing pain until I saw an orthopedic surgeon who said a replacement was pretty much my only option to get rid of the pain. No-brainer. I now have a titanium and polypropylene knee and no pain.

Anyway, I don't suppose they're doing foot replacements yet. What bone was broken? Metatarsal? Maybe you're getting arthritis. Does aspirin help?

 

Not a broken bone but I have a knife wound in my left hand that went all the way through nearly taking my thumb off. I was 19 at the time. I still have pain in the middle of it from time to time. I'm guessing any kind of trauma that is in a "high use" spot, like a hand or a foot, tends to heal less completely? Just a wild guess here I'm certainly not a Doc and I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn last night.