goatwarden wrote:Brickatius, you have my sympathies although I am glad you have got to a sustainable state even if it is dependant upon some bits you didn't grow yourself. Knowing how depressing I have found it all, despite it all being fairly straightforward for me so far, I can only imagine how I would have felt in your position.
I had my six month check last Wednesday. I was beginning to worry whether I was experiencing the beginnings of avascular necrosis, as I had started to feel a dull ache a lot of the time. I wouldn’t call it pain in as much as if I had to put up with it forever it wouldn’t really be a problem but worry because I haven’t really had any significant pain even immediately after the accident. However at the clinic they x-rayed me and told me there was no signs of whitening around the cartilage, so no indication of AVN. Great news; I put the ache down to the fact that I have been doing my first prolonged job since the accident for the last three weeks and it involved lifting a lot of timber and constant bending and kneeling.
The doctor I saw this time was not a hip specialist but told me all about the potential difficulties and risk factors for AVN. I then showed him a print of my "before" x-ray (don't know why he hadn't already seen the real thing) and told him it was not only badly displaced, but out for 20 hours before fixation and he suggested I was an ideal candidate for AVN and was surprised they had managed to fix the bone so accurately.
Encouraged by the prognosis, I asked if I was safe to ride a real bike yet (at six week check the consultant had advised me that a turbo was OK but not to ride a real bike for a year!). The doctor was somewhat illusory but came down to admitting they didn’t like to tell patients it was OK, in case they broke and blamed the clinic (fair enough in today’s world) but that I could probably ride if I wanted to. He suggested the issue was that the screws can present a stress raiser in the bone, so a potential source of fatigue failure when subjected to repeated stress cycles; this did make me wonder why they suggest using a turbo is fine as that would still cause the stress cycles.
On the strength of this advice, today I rode the five miles round trip to the Post Office and enjoyed it greatly. Hopefully tomorrow we will get to take our first ride on the new tandem which has been sitting idle in the garage since collecting it in February.
I was the same as you, badly displaced and 20 hours before fixation so I'm hoping to avoid AVN. I'm 8 weeks in and at the 6 week checkup everything had lined up and was healing well, I can apply a lot of weight to the leg but I'm not going to push it and try and walk just yet.