Login required to started new threads
Login required to post replies
Hi everyone, just thought I’d try my luck and see if anyone had any experience/ a similar situation to myself..long story short I had a misdiagnosed neck of femur stress fracture which resulted in needing a dynamic hip screw 10 weeks ago. The recovery process has been long, slow and challenging to say the least! I’m still getting a load of pain (although more discomfort now) when walking and cannot see how it would ever be possible to run again!! I’m swimming regularly and managing a few turbo sessions a week but it’s the constant groin pain/sharpness when weight bearing which is still concerning me..I’m convinced it’s a non union fracture as I’m sure it would have healed by now! My surgeons are only doing follow up xrays (doesn’t show the actual fracture anyway).
I’m hoping someone here can give me a bit of hope and reassurance and share any relevant experience with this type of injury/surgery..
Thanks!
Last edited by:
Dynamichipgirl: Jul 8, 19 6:51
So sorry about your injury. It's a tough one! I had a femoral neck stress fracture training for my first Ironman (I was underweight and over trained - perfect storm - I'm also a middle-aged female). An MRI confirmed it was a stress fracture after I DNF'd in a 70.3 due to terrible crippling pain after a mile of trying to run. This was June 2015. I was on the sofa for a couple months doing nothing at all with a little PT. It was awful. By September I was riding my fat and cross bikes easy but that might have slowed the healing process a little. I was swimming too by then. I started the Alter G at 20% of body weight in November through December. With the help of my new coach I started the run/walk protocol in January. (started off with 1 min jog and few minutes walk). My coach was super careful in building back my run. By March I was up to 5-8 mile runs. I race the same 70.3 in June of 2016 and did well and then did my first full Ironman later in August. It was a very slow process back to health. If you have a good team of professionals and support it will make all the difference. Doing less is more when recovering from this type of stress fracture. It's in an area that doesn't have a lot of blood flow so it takes longer to heal. You can make a come-back from this kind of injury. At the time I was diagnosed it felt bleak. But now 4 years later I'm running strong and training for IM #4. And haven't had a major injury since that SF in 2015 (just a few niggles here and there but normal stuff)
Best of luck. You'll recover. Just be patient with this one. I didn't have any surgery so your recovery may take a bit longer. But you will heal.
Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
PS - feel free to PM me with other questions or you can ask them here :-)
Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
Thank you so much for the reply..that was really helpful and encouraging! So glad to hear you are all recovered and training well! (With lessons learnt I imagine!..a big wake up call for me in terms of nutrition and overtraining..)
It’s so tough not being able to do what I used to..I definitely have an issue with pushing the boundaries and overdoing it... did you do any strength training during the rehab phase?
how long did you experience pain for? Or was it a case of crutches until no pain when walking ?
Even though you didn’t have surgery it’s still really inspiring to hear how well you’ve done and that it is possible to get back..I didn’t realise how mentally challenging it would be!
Also did you get any follow up mri scans to see if the fracture healed?
Yes I definitely learned a few lessons from that one :-) But in a way it could have been a blessing in disguise now that I look back on it. I now appreciate every race and every day I get to train. I listen to my coach and I back off and communicate when I have a niggle so it doesn't turn into an injury. That's the biggest one. When my hip/groin area hurt I thought it was a soas or hip flexor issue and tried to train through it. I should have backed off from training and taken a few days off. I shouldn't have even started the 70.3. Now I'm much wiser and careful about my health and training. Having a good coach is also crucial for me. To this day I might always be a little under-trained compared to my rivals, but I'm healthy and make it to the starting lines :-)
I forgot to mention that I was on crutches for about 6-8 weeks (think it was 7). ****EDIT: it was more like 11-12 weeks on crutches looking back at details. **** It was sore to weight bare so the crutches helped for a while. I hated them and hated being reduced to a couch potato while on them. The pain/soreness got better over the 7 or so weeks where I could walk. I felt it a little bit when I walked (1-1.5 on a scale of 1-10) but by September I only felt it once in a while.
I didn't do any formal strength training during the healing process for my hip. It was mostly light PT exercises.
I got another MRI 3 months later in September and was surprised when it showed the SF actually got a little bigger but it looked like it was healing and not as pronounced as the first one. It was odd. My pain was so much better than my first MRI. The doctor decided to put limits on my activities. I could swim a few times a week but one week I could do 2 session of the alter G and 1 bike/trainer session and the next week I could do 1 session on the alter G and 2 bike/trainer sessions. I got a third MRI in December and it showed 90% healing and the doctor was very happy. My pain was virtually gone. Still some aches and pains here and there but I was told that would be normal for a year or so. At this point I was doing about 90-95% of my body weight on the Alter G and things were feeling good with the random ache or pain (light stuff, nothing too alarming).
The hardest part of this injury is that it takes so long to heal. But know that bones will heal and you will be back to normal.
Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
Last edited by:
70Trigirl: Jul 8, 19 11:18