Advise on returning after injury.

[Kmwill6 0]

Just curious about others experiences with returning to the sport after an injury. About three months ago I broke my left heal, right femur, tale bone, compression fractured my L1 and L2 vertebrae, along with a few other broken bones, pulled muscles and so on. My PT I coming along good but I can't get a answer from any Dr. as to when I can return to jumping. Is there anyone out there that can give me an idea as to how long it takes to get back to the sport after this type of injury and what to expect when I do get back to it.

[Southern_Man 0]

Every injury is different. I suffered a femur break and synmoidisys injury in my ankle last November. it took me until March until I was jumping again.

I would not expect a doctor to be able to tell you when you were ready. I personally never asked and had to educate my PT about the forces that I would need to be able to withstand.

I upsized for quite a number of jumps while returning.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[countzero 7]

Broke my left tib & fib and had hardware installed in 09. I was out for 9 months, could have returned after 8 but wanted to be sure. The doc said don't jump until I could do all the sports actions (like running and jumping up and landing on my feet ect.) related to jumping without pain. Also to listen to my body and not push things. Bones heal pretty quick, it's the ligaments and muscles that take time.

diamonds are a dawgs best friend

[GLIDEANGLE 1]

You will be ready when you are ready.

The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

[NWFlyer 2]

Quote

The doc said don't jump until I could do all the sports actions (like running and jumping up and landing on my feet ect.) related to jumping without pain.

This is critical - to the OP: when considering readiness to come back it's important to explain to your care team (doctors, physical therapists, etc.) what kind of forces you can expect on your body, particularly around landing. Just saying "can I skydive?" usually doesn't give them enough information to help assess. Explain what you need to be able to do and when they believe you can safely do that without increased risk of re-injury (I say increased risk because even if you're 100% healed and back to where you were pre-injury, there's of course always going to be risk of injury).

Can you run (to run out a landing)? Can you jump off a reasonable height (say, a table) to the ground and land safely? Can you safely make sharp lateral moves? Can you safely PLF? Are your vertebrae healed well enough to handle a hard opening?

That's the physical stuff, then there's the mental. You'll want to do thorough recurrency training given that (if your profile jump numbers are correct) you'll likely be well out of currency for your license level. Upsizing temporarily (or permanently) is probably a good idea.

Assuming your injury occurred skydiving, making sure you thoroughly understand what happened in that incident and how you can prevent it again will be very important psychologically to being ready to come back.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[JohnMitchell 16]

What Krisanne said.
My guideline is that I can run without (too much) pain and can do chinups. That's gotten me thru several rehabs (usually not jump injuries).

Do you really only have 100 jumps in 3 years? Then get a lot of refresher training. Did you hurt yourself jumping? Then learn what you did wrong and get enough training that you don't do that again.

Many factors involved here. Talk to your instructors.

[skez 0]

If you break your legs properly your running days are over especially when it gets cold...I just slide my feet along the ground for as long as I can when I do fast landings

FTMC

[skez 0]

People should also be worried about what will happen if u break a femur again with a full length titanium rod on the inside of the femur.....it would make a mess and maybe evan be unfixable has anyone seen it happen?

FTMC

[Kmwill6 0]

I got hurt by catching a turbulent low to the ground. One person said it looked like god slapped me out of the sky. My profile is moderately rite. I am B license with 100 jumps I have goten mostly in the last 18 months. Thanks everyone for the advice on exsplaning the forces involved with the sport. I'll just have to let time tell.

[skez 0]

Kmwill6

I got hurt by catching a turbulent low to the ground. One person said it looked like god slapped me out of the sky. My profile is moderately rite. I am B license with 100 jumps I have goten mostly in the last 18 months. Thanks everyone for the advice on exsplaning the forces involved with the sport. I'll just have to let time tell.

same shit happened to me a while back had a bit of a canopy collapse coming into land luckily was just high enough to regain then flare and land safely ....but scared the shit out of me
...

FTMC

[dirtbox 0]

The advice I was given is below, I am not a doctor and I am just recounting what was told to me relevant to my injuries (full length IM nail right femur after a swooping accident broke the femur in to 10+ pieces).

I spoke to two different ortho surgeons about my femural nail and having another accident. Both said the knee would blow out (ligaments) long before the titanium rod/femur would be damaged. The femur is now re-inforced with the titanium rod that will flex a reasonable amount without breaking the bone (and if the bone did break the rod will flex back to its normal position and keep the the limb stable). That is not to say you can't bend the rod, just that it is extremely unlikely as there are other ways the energy will be absorbed before the rod bends permanently.

One surgeon did relate a story of a girl who had a second break and managed to permanently bend the rod only weeks after having the nail put in. The femur was completely stable with a 45 degree bend in it (re-broken obviously, but stable because of the rod). Extracting the rod around the bend was took a bit of thinking but other than that not really a big deal (grated this surgeon is the head of one of the best orthopaedic centres in Canada)

[skez 0]

dirtbox

The advice I was given is below, I am not a doctor and I am just recounting what was told to me relevant to my injuries (full length IM nail right femur after a swooping accident broke the femur in to 10+ pieces).

I spoke to two different ortho surgeons about my femural nail and having another accident. Both said the knee would blow out (ligaments) long before the titanium rod/femur would be damaged. The femur is now re-inforced with the titanium rod that will flex a reasonable amount without breaking the bone (and if the bone did break the rod will flex back to its normal position and keep the the limb stable). That is not to say you can't bend the rod, just that it is extremely unlikely as there are other ways the energy will be absorbed before the rod bends permanently.

One surgeon did relate a story of a girl who had a second break and managed to permanently bend the rod only weeks after having the nail put in. The femur was completely stable with a 45 degree bend in it (re-broken obviously, but stable because of the rod). Extracting the rod around the bend was took a bit of thinking but other than that not really a big deal (grated this surgeon is the head of one of the best orthopaedic centres in Canada)

Yeh makes sense..I thought similar...but also thinking either it would bend and just crack the femur in alot of places or if u hit it right just have a titanium rod spear threw your knee lol..

No matter what its gonna be bad I suppose

FTMC

[Southern_Man 0]

Yes, when I asked my understanding is that if I hit hard enough to cause damage to the titanium in my leg that I would likely have multiple significant other injuries to where a broken femur would be the least of my worries.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

[skez 0]

Also read somewhere that the femur is the hardest bone to break and rarely does someone only break a femur by itself...its usually one of multiple breaks and usually only occurs in bad car accidents or falling injuries.....when I broke my femur I also broke both ankles severely (as in my profile pic) , plus dislocated and broke my elbow

FTMC