Running with a broken collarbone...

Well, I've been pretty bad lately about keeping my blog updated.  Back in February I broke my collarbone skiing and have been dealing with it off and on since then.  

Not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I was enjoying going over some jumps in a little terrain park at Sippapu Ski resort when I landed wrong.  Not that exciting, but Cathy actually was taking a video of me when I wiped out.  I go over the 1st jump at about the 10 second mark in the clip.

When it was all said and done it just seemed to be one of those freak deals where I landed just wrong and that coupled with the fact that the snow was pretty much 100% manmade snow that had thawed and refrozen many times so that it was pretty much like falling on concrete.

I knew when I landed I hurt myself, I just didn't know how bad.  It was pretty painful, but I got back up on my skis (my skis didn't even come off) and skied down to the bottom of the mountain.  Once down at the bottom I started feeling around to see what hurt the most and figured out pretty quickly that something was messed up with my left collarbone.  There was a huge knot that wasn't supposed to be there.  A quick trip to the ski patrol first aid hut and they confirmed that something was messed up with my collarbone, they rigged up a makeshift sling and gave me an ice pack and sent me on the way to the walk in clinic in Taos which was about 45 minutes away.  The X-ray in Taos confirmed it, I had a clean break of my left clavicle, the only thing left was to decide whether it would need surgery or not.  They gave me a little nice sling and told me to get with an orthopedist as soon as I could.  We ended up going back to Sippapu and Cathy and Eli were able to ski the next morning before we headed back to Lubbock.  I didn't sleep that great that night, but we were there to ski and I wasn't going to be comfortable anywhere so we figured they might as well get to enjoy the skiing while we were there.

I was able to get into an orthopedic specialist that next Monday and he didn't think it would need surgery.  He also said I shouldn't run at least until he was able to verify that it was going to stay in that same position and not move around.  If it stayed in the same position he felt that I would probably be able to start running again in a few weeks.

After 3 weeks, the X-ray confirmed it was still in the same place so he grudgingly gave me permission to start running again (I guess he didn't say that I couldn't run anyway).  I started out fairly slowly and kept my arm in the sling while I was running.  I would actually hold onto the strap with my left hand to keep my arm from jostling around as much.  

5 weeks after I broke it I got another X-ray that showed that it was actually starting to heal a little.  

The Dr. told me to ditch the sling and start working on range of motion exercises.  I didn't realize it, but if you don't move your shoulder for an extended period of time it will really lock up on you.  There is a fine line that they have to run between letting you start using your arm before it heals and possibly re-breaking it and letting it heal completely but then having to spend months and months in physical therapy getting your range of motion back in your arm.    I was surprised at how limited my range of motion had already gotten and it took a few weeks to get pretty much back to normal.  I still wasn't cleared to lift anything heavy with my left arm, and still cleared to run only grudgingly with strict orders not to fall so trails were out of the question, but I was able to get pretty much back on track and started logging a few 50+ mile weeks.

We went quite a while between X-rays at this point and I was feeling pretty confident that things were progressing nicely.  I nearly had my full range of motion back and was even cheating a bit on the lifting heavy things.  I tried to keep things close to my body, but I hoisted a few 50lb feed sacks over my head filling my protein feeder down at my hunting land and a few things like that and felt pretty good.  I figured the last X-ray the week before my goal 50K trail race was just a formality more than anything.  I even went out on the trails a few times although I was pretty careful and thankfully didn't ever actually fall down.

My last X-ray looked pretty good to me, although I'm not a Dr. and the Dr. wasn't near as impressed with it as I was.

You can for sure see that it is making progress, but being almost 3 months since it broke, the Dr. was expecting it to be farther along and nearly completely healed.  There is some calcification showing, but it isn't healed.  The Dr. pretty much told me that I was already pushing the envelope with all the running I was doing and really didn't think running a 50K trail race was a good idea at all.  If I did run it I needed to be really careful and not fall down.  If I did fall down, for I for sure shouldn't reach out to catch myself with my left arm as this could easily cause the collarbone to re-break.

What I went into the checkup thinking was going to be a slam dunk ended up becoming a hard decision.  Did I skip the trail race that I had been training 4 months for?  Do I just run it very cautiously?  I told the Dr. that I was probably going to go ahead and run the race, but I would try my best not to fall.

I pretty much failed miserably on that goal, but thankfully it seems like my collarbone was able to stay together.  I'll update the blog with my race report soon.

Don't take my experience as irrefutable evidence that you can start running again after taking 3 weeks off for a broken collarbone, but that was my experience and so far it seems like I was able to get away with it.  Luck may have as much to do with that as anything though.  

One thing I did find was a relatively unknown alternative to the plate and screws if you do need surgery though. http://www.sonomaorthopedics.com/collarbonedoc/ seems like it would be the way to go to let you get back on your feet and active as fast as possible.  I didn't need surgery so it wasn't really something I looked into, I'm sure it is very expensive, but not sure how much more that traditional surgery or anything.  Might be an option for some folks anyway.

That's it for now.  Nathan