“My mom broke her hip when she wasn’t all that old - probably in the late 1960’s early 70’s. She was on crutches for a year. Finally my Dad (a doctor) told the surgeon to get that pin out in no uncertain terms.
Mom was walking without the crutches in less than 6 weeks”
Sometimes the screws/fittings HAVE to be removed to prevent future bone failures...
I broke my femur (broke the ball off and comminuted the trocanteric ridge) skiing once and was ‘rebuilt’ to heal.
If the supporting pieces were not removed the ball of my femur would have broken off as the calcium in the femur would have ‘thought’ there was enough ‘natural’ support.
These things are not fun, petey, but they are things that we will and do THRIVE through.
God bless and preyers sent!
Did something similar when I was 12 and my horse hung a leg over a jump and we cartwheeled. Fractured growth plate/ slipped femoral epiphysis. Four pins in the hip joint.
Talking about Mom’s hip in the 1960’s or so, there was a time when the medic crowd did not speak “stainless steel”. The screws, etc were not made to any particular grade of SS and many did indeed cause more problems, like corrosion, than they fixed.
Curiously, and totally by chance, it was Admiral Rickover, during a casual conversation with a surgeon on a plane ride, that made the docs aware there was a problem with the chemistry. By the early 80’s those problems had pretty much been identified and handled. And I remember a few of my busted up friends showing me their first stage screws after they were removed, still in perfect shape.