After “constant pain for years,” a man in Washington unexpectedly discovers he’s had a “broken wrist for 8 years.” He suffered a scaphoid fracture when he was in a car accident almost a decade ago, but claims the doctor overlooked it at the time. Thousands on Reddit were shocked by how someone could have gone for this long with a serious injury without treatment.
According to his twin posts on r/Orthopedics and r/mildlyinfuriating, Reddit user mynewjourney2425 broke his tibia and fibula after the car accident, but medical staff didn’t bother checking his wrist. “It’s been intermittently painful ever since,” he wrote, explaining how grabbing things the “wrong way” can even put his hand out of commission for a day.
The Injured Man Claims He Believed It Was Tendon Damage This Whole Time
Initially, mynewjourney2425 believed it to be chronic tendon pain from damage because of the accident. Sadly, things became unbearable to the point that he had an X-ray done to see what the problem was, revealing his broken wrist. “It must have gotten much worse, because I don’t know how a doctor misses THAT,” he exclaimed. Several commenters shared similar injury stories, but very few could believe how he let 8 years go by without having his wrist checked.
“How does one not feel broken bones for 8 years? You’d have known after 8 seconds,” says a Redditor in disbelief. One person claiming to work in orthopedics says that fractures can be easy to miss, so multiple follow-up screenings might have caught the scaphoid fracture years ago. Unfortunately, OP claims to have no insurance and just ignored it, thinking it was a mere tendon issue.
Now that years have gone by, this fracture might have developed pseudoarthrosis, also known as nonunion, meaning that the bone failed to heal correctly back into place. According to spine surgeon Matthew Colman, mynewjourney2425 might need bone grafting or other complex procedures to treat it properly.
Physical pain, no matter where it is on our body, is communicating something for a reason. While having a “high pain tolerance” might be seen as a source of one’s pride, physical therapists at Battle Born Health warn about the severe and possibly permanent damage an injury can inflict if ignored.
