Tell me your stories of medically missed broken bones

Had a couple. Sprained my ankle (or so I thought) doing Brazilian jui jitsu training. Although it hurt like hell I could still walk/hobble on it so didn’t think much of it. Two weeks later of working 12hr shifts and walking the dogs it still wasn’t getting any better. Went to the Doctors to ask the nurse if there was anyway of speeding up the recovery. “Errm, you did go to A&E to get this checked out didn’t you?” “No, why?” “Well I suggest you do” I then drove to the hospital, had an X-ray and discovered it was broken, quite badly in fact. It was touch and go if I required metalwork. They couldn’t believe I was walking on it for so long and was very lucky. They said if I’d of gone over on it I would’ve been in real trouble. Got it plastered then had to tell the wife the good news that she’d have to leave work, get the bus to the hospital and drive us back home. That went down like a lead balloon.
The other one was this August bank holiday just gone. Hairline fracture of the pelvis this time. Out on a road ride and lost the front going down a greasy backroad. The pain was all in my groin area so presumed it was a bad groin strain. Next day I couldn’t walk at all so of to A&E again. X-ray showed no break so was sent home but to come back a week later for a check up. It was then, after looking at the X-ray again they discovered the crack. Spent the next six weeks doing naff all except sleeping and sitting on the settee stroking the dogs and watching crap TV whilst my long suffering wife took the dogs out three times a day as well as working full time. She’s a good egg….

X-ray showed no break so was sent home but to come back a week later for a check up. It was then, after looking at the X-ray again they discovered the crack.

the A&E doc is a generalist usually.  All X rays are reviewed by a specialist .  Thats who picked up the fracture

Twice. Scaphoid when in Canada, ended up wearing a brace to ride with as I was told it was a bad sprain, gave me grief for years afterwards & fundamentally changed my riding position on the bike (couldn’t hold my arm in the same spot).

Second time was a collar bone & sternum. Admittedly I did a great job on myself breaking a load of ribs, my shoulder blade & tore a load of tendons in the same crash, but that still gives me a massive amount of grief 8 years later.

It was an unfortunate accident at an EWS, came round a blind corner on a very fast bit of track, only to find the rider in front had bottled a gap & stopped on the lip, I tried to miss them but ended up taking us both out. I came off considerably worse.

I’ve only broken two bones. (Of my own, anyway.)

When I was 14 I hurt my left wrist playing rugby. Funnily enough it was the only time, doing any sport, that I ever thought “oh no! I’m gonna get hurt”. I was diving over the line to score & the covering defender slid in on me as I did.

I showed it to my dad, a surgeon, who pronounced me to be fine and prescribed two aspirin. After three weeks of pain my dad relented & took me into his hospital where a broken scaphoid was revealed.

25yrs later I was riding my motorcycle in Manali in the Indian Himalayas. We’d been learning to Paraglide & my girlfriend had just broken her back in a crash & had to have back surgery before flying home. I was riding back to the paragliding school when a shoe-walla ran out into road in front of me & I hit him & came off. Luckily, he was okay but my left wrist was pretty painful.

I went to a chemist & got some Tramadol. That evening the 2006 World Cup started & I watched the game in a bar, drank about ten beers and took about ten Tramadol. It was still agony.

The next morning the guy that owned our hotel said he was also a doctor. (Indians generally tell you what they think you want to hear). He examined my wrist & said it probably wasn’t broken but he knew a guy in the market who had an X-ray machine. As you do.

I found the guy and it was a stall where he sold stuff but he had a room to the rear with an old X-ray machine. He took the picture of my wrist and pegged it up on a line at the front of his stall whilst it dried. He examined it with me. “No broken” was his report.

I had three more weeks of riding with my German buddy to do up to Leh and then off road up to Tso Moriri on the Chinese border then down through Kashmir & eventually Delhi. I took a heap of Tramadol every day. Working the heavy clutch on my BMW GS was agony. Dropping the heavily laden bike in sand or in a river was tough to pick up with one good arm.

I flew home from Delhi and, this time, my dad was more considerate. He organised an X-ray for me.  Broken elbow, it turned out. The wrist was referred pain.

Who knew?

(I also had a completely ruptured Achilles once that a useless GP diagnosed as a “strain” so I spent two weeks walking around with a foot not attached properly before I had to have reconstructive surgery.)

Motorcycle crash 25 years ago. I was able to walk but yelped with knee pain as I stepped into the ambulance.

Busy Bank Holiday Monday, X-rays taken and diagnosed with a broken left fibia and swollen right ankle. Long temporary pot fitted, come back on Wednesday please. At the time I prodded the area that the nurse explained was broken and asked why it didn’t hurt…

Absolute agony limping round on my ‘good’ leg till Wednesday came around.

Re-X-rayed, ashen faced radioligist explained that there was indeed nothing wrong with my potted leg. My ‘good’ leg was broken and my ankle displaced! At least that explained the pain.

There is no real morel to this story because shit happens and nobody died. If I had been better at riding motorbikes I wouldn’t have been in A&E.

That and do your physio properly, your future depends on it. I suffered with regular swelling problems if I chased my kid round on a cold ankle until I ran a marathon 15 years later. It now gives me no bother at all.

Not quite the same but when I had an MRI scan on my spine everyone who looked at it pointed to a different vertebra about 4 away from the one that was causing the problems and said “when did you do that?”. No idea.

My son had an x-ray on his ankle aged 35 after a football injury. The consultant pointed at something else and said “that’s where it was broken a while ago”. He was 6 weeks premature, feet first breech birth and came out with a very black and bruised foot. Those forceps can do some damage.

Starting to feel very lucky getting to 63 with only two broken bones. An arm after a fall as as a toddler and a scaphoid as a teenager.  In the subsequent half century involving rock climbing, motorcycling, hillwalking, running,  and loas of cycling, nothing. broken

My last trip to minor injuries was after a fall off a kitchen counter hitting a sharp table cornerwith my lower back  on the way down!!!!  Excruciatingly painfail but nothing broken.

I had a tumble mid lock down (yes it was irresponsible but not intentional). I hurt my shoulder after slaming tree.

After an xray I was told it was ligament damage and left with a sling and substantial pain.

Once week later I visited the specialist for a follow up. After another xray, it was found I had broken my shoulder blade, several ribs and collapsed a lung.

Ended up in hospital straight after for four nights to my lung inflated and MRIs to conclude how many ribs I had broken.

my story wasn’t so bad

crashed at the weekend in a race

nade it halfway through work on Monday, and hand was aching really bad, couldn’t grip properly

went to a&e, had an x-ray pretty quickly, they looked at it, said it was fine sent me back to work

half an hour later, i got a  phonecall, they said someone else had reviewed it & spotted a fracture in my hand, called me back and strapped it up

Two stories, one not a bone though.

Twisted my ankle badly in Summer ’23 and it wasn’t improving. Finally had an MRI scan and was referred to an ankle consultant surgeon chap, who indicated to me that I had not broken it this time, but had done so many years previously. I do recall ‘spraining’ an ankle when I was approx 9, and having a few days off school unable to walk. Maybe it wasn’t sprained…

Second one was when I unmistakably snapped my Achilles tendon in 2010 (anybody who’s had this knows when it snaps as the sound is so loud) and was told by the doc in A&E that it was just a sprain and to “walk it off”. As it was MK hospital, a place I had had too many bad experiences with (awful place), I hobbled out and went straight to another (SMH), where they did the Thompson Test (basics) and immediately booked me in for surgery. ‘Walk it off’ my @rse!