Hello. Broke my patella clean in two yesterday. My mates helped me a lot and the paramedics were awesome.
I am having surgery later and the consultant expects full recovery in time but I am in the dark about the recovery process
Does anyone have experience of this situation they could share with me please.

Ouch!!!

I’ve no experience of this (sorry), but wanted to say get well soon.

Thanks

I had a small fracture at the top of my tibia, my ACL pulled off a lump of bone. This was back in spring and obviously quite a different injury, but I imagine that the treatment is similar.

The actual fracture was okay, it was having my entire leg in a cast for a month which did the most damage. It’s amazing how much muscle you can loose in a leg! It takes a lot of hard work and physio and a long time to rebuild the muscle.

I also found that the consultants didn’t really know much about how the recovery process as they don’t tend to have much involvement in it. Just be patient and take it one step at a time! Hope you’re feeling better soon.

That’s very helpful. Thanks

Ouch.

As above, it’s not the bone healing that is the biggest issue – it’s the associate muscle wastage and loss of flexibility that take the time to sort out.

Do the physio and keep doing it.

It took a couple of years for me to fully recover from a broken hip despite the bone healing in the usual 6 weeks. I’m going through somethign similar with a shoulder injury – 5 months immobility has left me with some movement restrictions and losss of strength.

Hope the Op goes well!

Thanks. There’s a theme developing. The consultant said 2 weeks in a cast so that being the case muscle wastage will be an issue but hopefully not as bad as you guys.
Thanks

A mate did his two weeks ago, so I’m wishing you well and sending him the link!

I suspect even without a cast you’ll be non or partial weight bearing for a bit longer than 2 weeks. My hip was pinned to there was no cast but I still couldn’t drive until I could hop on the broken leg which was about 6-8 weeks.

Try and make sure you get physio early (and often) – I had a gap when I broke my hip as I transferred between NHS trusts and it did delay recovery initially.

Thanks again wwaswas

at least it wasn’t your nutella (oof)

Actually I broke it into 9 pieces and some little shards which went in the bin. and some cartilage damage.

Mine wasn’t as bad as yours. A hairline fracture running 2/3 of it, top to bottom.

It was a year ago last week. My leg is still noticeably weaker and am about 20 deg away from kicking my bum.

I had two weeks of a groin to ankle cast followed by 8 weeks with a knee brace. I think I gave up on crutches about 2 weeks into the brace.

Good luck.

I’m on the physio trail six months after shattering mine. Just been able to get back on a bike again in the last few weeks. Mine was a particularly messy break though and had a huge amount of metal in it to hold it all together. I was braced at full extension for about six weeks. I could, and was encouraged, to weight bear straight away. I could only walk about 20m at first but gradually I could walk a mile or two with crutches. I’d recommend you do exactly as you’re told by the consultants. By being a good patient I got the brace off early, which was a god send. Take all physio offered. Mine has been excellent. Physio, hydrotherapy and specialist sport therapy all through the NHS. I had to have a second surgery to take the metal work back out at the end of October and since then I’ve regained about 3/4 of my normal range of movement, albeit without the strength to do a lot of things normally. Work hard at the physio and you’ll be rewarded. Set yourself goals and try and stay active. I worked on my upper body the best I could and it kept me entertained while I was off work (four and a half months!). Still got a long way to go but aiming to be back mountain biking in January. Any queries, feel free to pm me. Good luck and try not to enjoy the prescription painkillers too much.

In my old place you’d have had your op, been put in a brace or a cast, given some crutches, taken for a walk/hop, taken to the stairs to see if you could do them, then sent home with some exercises. You’d come back for a follow up appointment after a few weeks and then have the cast removed and get an urgent physio appointment to get range of movement back and build up muscle strength. Pretty simple and unlikely to have much in the way of long term issues.

Not knee here but hip.
As mentioned above get physio exercises asap. Push for them if you have to.
The sooner everything gets moving again the better (this is from bitter experience).

I hope you mend soon. Bunnyhop.

Thanks for the advice everyone especially egb81 as you seem to have been in a very similar situation. I am a very lucky boy who has lots of time to devote to physio and that seems to be the important part. Surgeon says cast off in 2 weeks then brace for 2 weeks then start physio.
My left wrist is sprained and my left knee is heavily bruised so I have to let these heal first before i can work on anything else.

Strange that they put you in a cast, I was told that was old school style and the braces were much better. I was braced from the start (mid May 1st surgery) and for about six weeks (end of June, coinciding with my first physio session). I only got it off that early due to following the consultant’s guidance with incredibly strict adherence. The risk I had was, due to the severity of the fracture (severely comminuted), if the brace came off too early then there was a good chance my quads, hamstrings and calf muscles would tear my knee cap to pieces again.

The bruising took months to go down on my knee and it extended half way to my foot. I recommend getting a reusable ice pack to help with the swelling, you can pick them up for about a fiver from any chemist. I got one that slides into a pouch that you can wrap around, which is pretty useful.

Thanks for the ice advice, I am using that on my wrist and other knee. A registrar I spoke to said everyone has a different approach but I will be in a brace in 13 days which really isn’t long.

Once you get your brace off, if you have access to a pool, swimming is a good way to work your leg and keep up some cardio fitness. It also has the added bonus of allowing you to look crazy if you fancy doing hydrotherapy exercises in a public baths.

As a rough guide you can expect to lose between 1-2% of muscle mass for every 24 hours it isn’t used, so think of that as an incentive to get off your arse and hobble about a bit. You’ll know you shouldn’t if you are still at hospital and your health care providers aren’t letting you go to the toilet on your own.
Other reasons not to are:

– you think you are going to fall over
– you are in agonising pain

Best of luck, the rehab will be testing at times but you’ll thank yourself at the other end! 🙂

That,s just really frightened me. 😕

My other knee is badly bruised and even with crutches I am wobbly and they were all adamant no weight on the knee.
The hospital is in special measures but everyone was awesome and the surgeon seemed like he had his head screwed on I will listen to him.