u/SessionElectrical909

This is my second post about my arm. I just had a follow up with my orthopedic doctor. For context I was in a terrible car accident 9 months ago. I had an open compound fracture of my right humerus with significant nerve damage. Because of the extent of my trauma, they had to wait 4 days before doing surgery on my arm.

Again, it’s been 9 months and the bone still hasn’t healed. My doctor is reluctant to do surgery or call it an infection. I do appreciate the fact that he’s cautious because the surgery would really suck, but if this is an infection I’d rather get it done. I don’t have any symptoms like redness in the area or fluid or anything coming out of my arm. I did read some studies about others that had low level infection and virtually no symptoms. If you look at my previous numbers, you can see that everything is trending upward even if some of the numbers are on the higher end of normal. Again, I’m a little concerned that even though some of my numbers are “normal” they are at the high end and trending upward. Do they have to be mega high in order to call it an infection? I am going to get a CT Scan and hopefully that will show more.

My doctor also said that I could potentially live with the bone being broken as I have a lot of metal in there to keep it stable. But my arm kills of if I push or pull too hard and I can’t really put any pressure on it. I don’t want that to be my life forever. I’m 36 years old. I’ve never smoked or had nicotine or steroids apart from prednisone maybe one or two times. Ideally I would not like to live with a broken bone. I feel eventually the metal would come loose and I’d need surgery, right?? Wouldn’t it be better to get surgery while I’m still young rather than 15 years from now? I’m so confused and frustrated.

I was in a really bad car accident about 9 months ago. A lot of internal trauma along with a broken pelvis and open compound fracture of my right humerus. I’ve included a pre surgical xray as well as my most recent xray from the end of May. As you can see there’s plates and screws. My bone still has not fully healed. I’ve been to three orthopedic surgeons. I didn’t go back to my original doctor who initially did the surgery because the accident happened far from where I live and I’m home now. My first doctor said he believed I had an infection and this is why it wasn’t healing. He wanted to do surgery about a month after his initial diagnosis. Basically, they would go in and take the metal out and surgically clean everything. They’d stitch me up and I’d wear a brace on my arm for 6 weeks while also on IV antibiotics. Once certain infection was gone they would go back in, re-do the metal, stitch me back up again.

About two weeks before surgery the doctor called to say due to insurance issues he couldn’t do the surgery, but referred me to another surgeon.

In the meantime a friend working at another hospital referred us to a doctor. We saw him and he said he didn’t think I had an infection at all and he just thought because the break was so bad that it’s just taking a long time to heal.

How the original surgeon deduced it was an infection was bloodwork. When the second doctor looked at my bloodwork he said that it wasn’t abnormal enough to indicate infection. He said I could have had a cold or something at the time. He ordered more bloodwork. I went and when the results came back, the one result that was initially high was now low. I was still on the high end for all other indicators, but he didn’t seem to think it was concerning. He told me we would keep an eye on it every month and a half or so.

I decided to keep my appointment with the doctor my original doctor referred me to in order to act as a sort of tie breaker. He agreed with my first doctor and said he thought I had an infection and needed surgery as described earlier. When I asked him about my recent bloodwork he said that even though technically everything was within normal range, it was at the very high end of normal for the particular results they look at to indicate infection. He said considering my bone not healed yet and the high-normal results, most likely it’s infection.

I do have a bone stimulator I wear every day for 30 min and I also take a bunch of vitamins and supplements for bone healing and have been eating a lot of protein as well.

As far as symptoms, my skin isn’t hot to touch in the spot and there’s no oozing or anything. I do still have swelling and I cannot pull or push without pretty significant pain.I am able to lean on it a bit so long as the surface is soft. I do feel exhausted almost all the time, but I did sustain a ton of other injuries, so i always chalked it up to recovering.

I will be seeing a rheumatologist in about two weeks to see if it could be some sort of auto immune thing.

I honestly don’t really know what to do or whose opinion to ultimately trust. If anyone has any advice or prior experience, I’d really appreciate it

Edit: added some relevant medical terms