I wanted to take a minute to share my story since I found so much useful information on this board. This thread helped me to make my decision to go for surgery.
I am a very active 29 year old male. I lift weights 4 times per week, play baseball and softball, run, cycle, and work on my house, doing everything from electrical to plumbing to heavy contrsuction in my spare time. I am a computer programmer by day.
I had a trip to the Bahamas scheduled beginning 5/30/07...
On 5/22/07 while playing center field in a softball game, a ball was hit into shallow left center and I was sprinting to the location. Going to make a back handed catch I decided the only way to make it was to lay myself out. As I dove the ball carried under my and my glove did as well, this placed all of my momentum and weight onto the top of my left shoulder, which forced my shoulder down and fractured my clavicle.... hence this post.
Here is the initial x-ray
http://www.santantonio.net/files/xray.jpg
I immediatly knew it was broken. The clavicle end was pushing up against my skin and I could clearly feel the bump where the skin was slightly tenting. The pain was bad, but not terrible. I was able to run off the field after it happened yelling "I'm out I'm out". I called my wife and told her I was broken and to meet me at the hospital.
Since I drive a manual transmission, with the encouragement of my teamates I decided to call an ambulance. The ambulance came and the worst part was the ride in the stretcher over the bumpy gravel road. I didn't take anything for the pain because I really don't do well with any sort of narcotics. I get nausious easily and vommiting all night is way worse than the pain.
When I got to the hospital I got the above x-ray taken and was given a sling. When they were putting the sling on me the pain was so bad that I started to vommit. Once that was done and some color came back into my face, I was ready to head home. Before I left the dr. on call talked to the ortho and told me the break was severe enough that I may need surgery.
By the morning of 5/23/07 the pain was managable. I slept on and off and kept waking myself up my moving my damn arm... stupid dreams. I was taking ibuprofin to keep swelling down, but that is all. We scheduled an ortho appt for later in the day.
The Orthopedic Surgeon I met with was part of Commonwealth Orthopedics in INOVA Alexandria complex. His name is Daniel E. Thompson. My wife and I were very happy with him and with the information that he presented. He told me that I would probably heal without surgery but there was the potential for a non-union. I gave me a timeline of 6 months with 2-3 in a sling. He then told me that surgery was an option, but totally up to me. He would use a titanium plate to join the two halves. He said the sucess rate is better, same 100% recovery time of 6 months, but I would be more comfortable in the short term. Without surgery I would heal with a shorter shoulder and a lump, with surgery I would have symetry again but would have a scar. I told him I was taking only ibuprofin for pain and he was fairly surprised.
I opted for surgery and was scheduled just two days later by Dr. Thompson's excellent surgery scheduling assitant. They worked with us to get us an appt on 5/25/07 at 1:00 pm.
I didn't eat from 12:00am on the day of surgery and drank only two sips of water.
Between the initial consult and the surgery I took nothing for pain since it wasn't really necessary. I was having surgery at INOVA Alexandria Hospital in Virginia, and met with my anesthesiologist regarding my concerns with anesthesia. She performed a local block on my shoulder and put me under very light sedation. I don't remember much about that day, although I had many conversations with the Dr. about treatment, rehab, the sling vs figure 8, and even an patient who broke the titanium plate... I have no recollection of this.
After surgery I woke up around 5:00pm feeling very nausious with my sling back on an a lot of iodine on me. My left arm was 100% numb and dead to me. I could feel nothing, it was so creepy. As I woke up I was very dizzy and started vommiting a lot when I started to be moved. I was perscribed Phenergan for nausea and Percocet for pain from the intitial hospital visit, and abenol (I think) as a stronger than advil alternative, but I was hoping to take nothing.
On the way home I kept throwing up in the car and when I got home I went straight away to bed. I slept the rest of the day on and off and didn't eat anything. The pain wasn't anything yet, but my arm/shoulder was still dead and the dizzyness was severe, so I laid very very still. The last time I threw up was at 8:00 pm
At 11:15 pm I woke my wife up and told her the pain in my sternum area was starting to come in a little bit, so she gave the the abenol in hopes of heading it off. The feeling was slowly coming back into my arm. The Dr. said to stay ahead of the pain with painkillers, but my nausea was keeping me from taking anything. I then woke up again at about 1:30 pm with what felt like an Elephant standing in the middle of my chest. The ibuprofin I was taking was doing nothing. I was literally writing in pain, but I didn't feel dizzy or nauseaus anymore... woot.
I tried to just take the pain but I couldn't. After a conversation with the on call Dr. and 4 hours of excrutiating pain in my sternum and shoulder, I took two percocet and was out and asleep without pain in about 15-20 minutes. I slept soundly. When I woke up around 12:00 pm, by jerking my arm again, I didn't have much pain, but I didn't much feel like getting out of bed. After a day of eating saltines and bananas, and drinking Gatorade, I ventured out of bed around 5:00 pm and headed to the television. I didn't have much pain but was taking 1 percocet every 6 hours that first day.
By 5/27/07, Sunday, I was not taking painkillers during the day only to sleep, and that was only because I was scared of the pain from the first night.
My mobility after surgery was greatly improved, and the scar is not too bad. My trip to the bahamas was decidedly low key, but not painful. By day 3 post opp I was completely off of pain meds and had little to no swelling.
My followup appt gave me this cool x-ray
http://www.santantonio.net/files/screws.jpg
I am 10 days out and I had my stitches out and had a good conversation with my Doc. Right now the main problem is that am *without* pain. This means I don't really know my limitations. I don't feel like I need my sling at all, but I wear it to protect myself from people when taking the metro to work. I need to keep stopping myself from doing things I shouldn't now.
Physical therapy starts on Monday, 6/11/07, and I hope to be completely without sling by 6/25/07. I will post back here as time progresses.
If anything, I can say get the surgery. By coincidence, a co-workers 22 year old son had almost the same break doing almost the same thing within 1 day of mine. He has opted for the natural healing method with sling. He is still in a lot of pain right now and has limited mobility.