Clavicle Surgery Recovery

[CaptStash]

28 May 2017 I came off the bike at 20+ and did a nifty tuck resulting in a little road rash (chewed-up face), broken helmet (maybe saved my life), and broken clavicle, scapula and a couple of ribs. I was in a ton of pain the few days between the injury and surgery, but it was almost instant relief after they put the plate on my collarbone. Recovery was easy since I had very little soft tissue damage. Bones heal in six weeks. As everyone else said, be patient.

I am also a rower, and used the rowing machine extensively in my rehab in order to force myself to use the injured side evenly with the other. By two months in I was able to do train as hard as I wanted. the bad news is that all that rowing rekindled the spark, and I am spending way more time on the water and the erg than on my bikes.

Do as much as you can as soon as the docs and PT's say you can. You'll be fine.

CaptStash....

[BryanE]

I don't know about plates
Mine was put in a Ti tray.
No PT was offered.
Four days after surgery I crawled on the trainer and started
the return.
I've broken my nose, hand and foot.
The collarbone was the worst.
Good luck.

[mmfs]

Another takeaway of mine is that everyone’s injury and recovery is different. I read and heard various stories of people feeling great and on the bike within days of injury or surgery. I felt like a wimp in comparison.

My experience was much different in requiring months before I felt good enough physically and mentally to be back in the bike.

And 18 months after, depending on the day, I definitely still know that I have a chunk of stainless steel in my shoulder, although it doesn’t prevent me from doing what I want.

[earlfoss]

in 2016 I crashed hard in a road race just outside New Glarus, Wisconsin. I knew instantly that my clavicle was broken. I had some other pretty severe problems, but nothing that was going to cause permanent damage.

I had to argue with a few PAs to even get a signoff on having the surgery even though the ends of my bones were displaced enough to warrant it. By the time I met with the surgeon, he glanced at the x-ray and said it was a no brainer that surgery was needed.

The procedure was problem free, and the only issue I had was dealing with the anesthetic.

Due to my other injuries, I wasn't able to ride or train again for around 3 months. When the time came that I thought I was ready to ride the trainer again, 5 minutes in it hit me how much fitness I had lost, and some serious depression set in. I probably should've gotten therapy for it, but I didn't and it still colors my thoughts from time to time.

[loxx0050]

You guys and breaking your collarbones riding (except the one guy playing soccer). I had my collarbone broken for me playing "touch" football...I use that term loosely because the team we were playing (rec coed league) was ultra agrgessive (pushed, shoved, way too much hand jocking....move like elbow throwing). Got punched or kneed in the upper back/shoulder blade (don't know exactly...guy was behind me) to prevent me from catching a low thrown ball. I was on all fours at first and then the shooting pain set in and stood up immediately grabbing my left shoulder. Thought I dislocated it and went to the ER and while waiting for the doc to reset the shoulder (after x-rays) they gave me some mophine via IV....first time I received that stuff and man it is some potent stuff. I literally felt it it start at my feet and move all the way up my body with a warm/tingling sensation.

When the doc finally showed up he confirmed it was a compound fracture of the my left clavicle with a piece floating in the middle. Said it was optional for me to have surgery on it or it could heal fine on its own....I opted out of surgery which to this day I regret. It healed where I have a big bump sticking out of my clavicle that is extremely noticable. My left shoulder now sits in a different position (a bit pull in and lower) than before so t-shirts don't fit right anymore (neck opening always seems to fall back and up against my throat). Range of motion is slightly off compared to pre-injury.

Also, the healing took what seem forever. At first I wore button up shirts because I could barely more it. Took forever to work up the courage to get out of bed because of the pain. Even months later I still had a hard time even doing modified pushups on a couch and had a hard time taking off long sleeve shirts. My bone in that area still aches when it storms out due to the change in pressure.

Worst thing was when the girlfriend (now wife) asked me 2 days after the injury to kill those creepy house centipedes (the ones that are pretty harmless to people but look just nasty) on the ceiling in our apartment bedroom.....let's say I missed and had to jump back and dodge it from falling on my. That hurt like hell I lost the sucker and it scampered off somewhere.

Couldn't drive my own car for 2 or so months because I had a manual transmission at that time and the non-use of one arm meant I was stuck waiting for the GF to give me a ride (or a buddy depending). I ended up just keeping my left on the steering wheel just long enough to shift and get my good arm back on the wheel to actually negotiate turns. (having manual transmissions also made it so when I've sprained my ankles badly also had hard time driving too).

[msl819]

Anytime there is impact severe enough to break a bone there will be more damage than just the bone break itself. I had soft tissue damage that took longer to heal and get back to normal than the bone itself. I can still have some ache and fatigue in that shoulder. I still notice it if I sleep on it wrong, etc. Think of all the soft tissue that connect on and around your clavicle. If you hit pavement hard enough to break the clavicle you have also done some pretty good damage to that tissue as well.

Everyone's recovery will be different. I wasn't racing so I wasn't as motivated as some to get back on the bike and push through uncomfortable pain. Others will be. I also was fortunate enough not have hit the pavement again since. I cannot imagine if i were 6-8 weeks out and was "able" to ride again and went back down before I was fully healed how'd that would have been.

All things being what they are, I cannot imagine what Tyler Hamilton must've dealt with breaking his clavicle in the TdF and finishing. I would have passed out or vomited from the pain alone, not to mention he was racing the Tour. He is either much tougher than I am or has access to much better drugs, or both!

[Calnago]

I busted up my collarbone in 2016. First doc said no surgery. Everyone I talked to and showed the X-ray to said “***, how is that supposed to heal thy self?” I kind of agreed and after 7 weeks of a lot of pain I sought second and third opinions, all of which leaned towards “I would have done the surgery” and “those bone ends aren’t even in the same universe, of course I would fix it”. So I scheduled surgery but by then I had “frozen shoulder” and they didn’t want to risk immobilizing it any longer. So went the course without surgery and much physiotherapy as we tried to get rid of the frozen shoulder in order to be able to do the surgery. It took a long time but in the end it somehow healed up well enough that I have full range of motion and no plates or screws. Pretty amazed actually but I guess there’s different schools of thought on it. Still, I was kind of mad I didn’t have surgery at the time because it was a much longer recovery than it would have been otherwise and when I hear of people back on their bikes 6weeks post surgery and stuff like that, whereas I was a year or so, I dunno... I see why the guys that are getting paid to ride their bikes are sent for surgery right away. I suppose though, since I healed naturally and don’t have any plates or screws, that this might serve me better as I age. Time will tell I suppose. Here’s an X-ray of my broken collarbone when i did it....

[Onion]

Holy smokes. I can't believe that healed on its own. the human body is crazy.

[FlashUNC]

A great story from Rouleur about the go-to surgeons for pro cyclists when they have a collarbone break:

https://rouleur.cc/editorial/herentals/

[BryanE]

Originally Posted by Calnago

I busted up my collarbone in 2016. First doc said no surgery. Everyone I talked to and showed the X-ray to said “***, how is that supposed to heal thy self?” I kind of agreed and after 7 weeks of a lot of pain I sought second and third opinions, all of which leaned towards “I would have done the surgery” and “those bone ends aren’t even in the same universe, of course I would fix it”. So I scheduled surgery but by then I had “frozen shoulder” and they didn’t want to risk immobilizing it any longer. So went the course without surgery and much physiotherapy as we tried to get rid of the frozen shoulder in order to be able to do the surgery. It took a long time but in the end it somehow healed up well enough that I have full range of motion and no plates or screws. Pretty amazed actually but I guess there’s different schools of thought on it. Still, I was kind of mad I didn’t have surgery at the time because it was a much longer recovery than it would have been otherwise and when I hear of people back on their bikes 6weeks post surgery and stuff like that, whereas I was a year or so, I dunno... I see why the guys that are getting paid to ride their bikes are sent for surgery right away. I suppose though, since I healed naturally and don’t have any plates or screws, that this might serve me better as I age. Time will tell I suppose. Here’s an X-ray of my broken collarbone when i did it....

I betcha that one tickled.
Broke mine early March 2015, healed badly on it's own and was in surgery early April. Then July 4th I lined up at the Breckenridge Firecracker 50. I didn't do well.
Good luck.

[gasman]

Originally Posted by Calnago

I busted up my collarbone in 2016. First doc said no surgery. Everyone I talked to and showed the X-ray to said “***, how is that supposed to heal thy self?” I kind of agreed and after 7 weeks of a lot of pain I sought second and third opinions, all of which leaned towards “I would have done the surgery” and “those bone ends aren’t even in the same universe, of course I would fix it”. So I scheduled surgery but by then I had “frozen shoulder” and they didn’t want to risk immobilizing it any longer. So went the course without surgery and much physiotherapy as we tried to get rid of the frozen shoulder in order to be able to do the surgery. It took a long time but in the end it somehow healed up well enough that I have full range of motion and no plates or screws. Pretty amazed actually but I guess there’s different schools of thought on it. Still, I was kind of mad I didn’t have surgery at the time because it was a much longer recovery than it would have been otherwise and when I hear of people back on their bikes 6weeks post surgery and stuff like that, whereas I was a year or so, I dunno... I see why the guys that are getting paid to ride their bikes are sent for surgery right away. I suppose though, since I healed naturally and don’t have any plates or screws, that this might serve me better as I age. Time will tell I suppose. Here’s an X-ray of my broken collarbone when i did it....

Ouch, you had bad advice from that first doc, he probably didn’t know how or had little experienc repairing clavicles . Maybe he was too proud to refer you to someone else .Just sayin. You should have been in surgery within a few days.

Glad you’re doing relatively okay now.

[m4rk540]

Chasing the break in a road race, I lost my front wheel at 30mph on a slight descent; a patch of sand took me out. It was the first time I had ever gone down where my first thought was ouch. Didn't think about the bike, didn't think about getting back up. Team van got me and drove me back to the start. Since I didn't feel anything pop, I was more concerned about the road rash and shortness of breath. Waited a few days to get checked out and even though I couldn't lift my arm above parallel the doctor was only concerned about internal injuries, ruptured spleen. I was sent off to get an x-ray but there was a 3 hour wait at the clinic so I went home. A week later I had full range of motion and didn't feel out of breath. Two weeks later I "raced" again. Anyway, I noticed that my left side had a bulge and through the magic of google, I diagnosed a Grade III shoulder separation.

8 years later I crashed again on my left side, slower speed and not as violent impact. I rode home. After a few days I could hardly lift my arm. I suspected another shoulder separation but I had nearly full range of motion. After suffering through a week of increasing soreness, I finally had an orthopedic surgeon check me out. Turns out I had actually broken my clavicle 8 years ago and now I was just dealing with serious sprain and strain.

[Calnago]

Originally Posted by gasman

Ouch, you had bad advice from that first doc, he probably didn’t know how or had little experienc repairing clavicles . Maybe he was too proud to refer you to someone else .Just sayin. You should have been in surgery within a few days.



Glad you’re doing relatively okay now.

Well, that’s what I thought as well, and once I had frozen shoulder and they couldn’t do the surgery I was even angrier. Still, I had one third “second opinion” that I almost cancelled and this was with one of the most respected shoulder surgeons in the city. It was on my own dime and since two other surgeons had already said they would have done surgery I thought going to this guy isn’t going to change anything now and would just cost me a chunk of change. But I’m glad I did. He was the most thorough, actually felt around looked at all the images, then in quite a measured, reasoned tone, he said that well... if he had seen me at the time of the accident, he would have most likely leaned toward surgery. That surprised me because at this point I was thinking it should have been a no brainer. But he said that it was healing and xrays to check showed that bone mass was indeed forming around the fractured area and while the two ends don’t align themselves back to each other, everything does eventually get bonded back with bone in between holding things together and possibly even making it stronger. It would be a little shorter than before but not really easily noticeable. I was mostly concerned that I might have to have one lever moved higher on my bars than the other, creating a hideously out of balance look on my otherwise beautifully proportioned bikes.
He also went on to agree that because of the frozen shoulder which had now set in, that we had to at least wait for that to recover which could be like 9-18 months. Gulp! And he also said that if full range of motion did return, then he wouldn’t be rushing to the operating table to rebreak it and fix it. So, I had to endure quite a lot of pain, and diligently do exercises to slowly get my range of motion back. Oh, he also talked about, if surgery was done, that once healed he would probably want to go back in to remove the hardware. Many just leave the hardware in. So, I don’t know... I guess the downside of not having surgery right away is that it takes much longer to heal, but it does seem to heal, at least it did in my case. Because of the time involved for natural healing, I guess that’s a big part of the consideration when a pro cyclist breaks a clavicle given that they’re getting paid big bucks to be on their bike, not whining about for a year as they recover and heal. In my case, the first guy probably looked at me thinking “why were you riding a bicycle around a corner like that in the first place at your age, hopefully this will learn ya”.
So, I don’t know. I seemed to have healed up fine without surgery so I’m ok with it now, but if it happens again, I think I’d be pushing for a quicker recovery via surgery. But if things seem like they could go either way, it doesn’t hurt to get a couple extra opinions right away.

[Hellgate]

OP. Stay on the trainer until you're 4 weeks post op then hit the road. Well, don't crash. With plates your pretty much well knitted and solid.

Back in the day, there were no plates, just a Velcro bra with no cups. Started training on the road 6 weeks after the break.

[m4rk540]

Originally Posted by Calnago

But he said that it was healing and xrays to check showed that bone mass was indeed forming around the fractured area and while the two ends don’t align themselves back to each other, everything does eventually get bonded back with bone in between holding things together and possibly even making it stronger.

That's what my guy told me and the likely reason I didn't break it again on the 2nd fall.

On a related note, check out this guy's separated shoulder:

https://cyclingtips.com/2019/03/raph...thing-release/