April 12, 2011

elbow pictures

Back in January, I broke my elbow.  Or rather, the hulking, slow, dope of a fullback on the other team slammed me down after I beat him to the ball, and HE broke my elbow.

I would like to say that what follows is not for the faint of heart, but it appears my non-displaced fracture of the radial head is actually pretty wimpy, as broken elbows go.

First, a graphic I sketched with my own crayons right onto your computer monitor (NO, I did NOT steal it off the googles, thankyouverymuch.  Well, OK, maybe just a little.):

The first thing you can tell from this illustration is that I have very neat penmanship with crayons.  The second thing you'll notice is that the radius makes up 33% of the bones in the elbow.  So breaking it is, you know, painful.

I think this is a view of the elbow from the torso side.  That is, something like the photo below, with x-ray quality images of the bones overlaid in a helpful and illustrative manner (that's the purple part... or maybe more of a periwinkle):


So, what broke in my elbow was the radial head, or the lumpy part at the end of the radius.  Here is one of the x-rays taken during the healing process, with the area of the radial head in the red box.  If you look closely, you can see a pale arc through the bone that should not be there.  That's the non-displaced fracture.  The inset enlargement shows it more clearly.



Do not be alarmed!  That is not blood.

So anyway, the big news today is that the doctor (or, Physician's Assistant, I found out later, but either way she is very cute) says that the bone is now healed.  I can return to getting knocked down on the soccer pitch, lifting heavy objects like full bottles of beer, etc.  I get to return for one final x-ray in two months just to be sure it's all good.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my TMI post for the day.  Thank you for reading.

5 comments:

JaneyV said...

My very apparent nerd side thanks you for this. I found it most edifying.
Glad you can lift beer again!

jjdebenedictis said...

TMI = Turf-scuffles Mean Injury

I'm glad your elbow is back to beer-lifting prime!

Phoenix Sullivan said...

Yes, well, while the radius does make up 33% of the bones in the elbow, it makes up considerably less than 33% of the bone mass in the elbow. So my diagnosis is that you're a wimp. And I think you used those same crayons to color those earlier pictures of the bruising. I'm pretty sure I recognize the periwinkle.

PJD said...

Jane: Glad I could satisfy your inner nerd.

Jen: Injury indeed. I had my share this year for sure. Broken nose, broken elbow... all soccer related.

Phoenix: There is a fine line between "wimp" and "trolling for sympathy." Also worth noting that statistical analysis and crayons can both be useful when trolling for sympathy.

fairyhedgehog said...

I'm glad you're all better now. That was surprisingly interesting to someone as squeamish as I am; it's the way you tell them!