Links

There're a number of sites useful for this kind of injury. Personally, I prefer those dealing with real recoveries, rather than descriptions of the physiological process in general. Although there are a few useful general ones: emedicine, the Duke Medical School (filled with detailed medical language and no pictures but x-rays), or the aofoundation. The latter is a Swiss-based organization that pioneered the systematic research on orthopedic surgery. The site is quite elaborate, but very interesting. One can click on the bone of a skeleton, and select type of fracture and treatment. It in the right margin of each topic, there are a number of references to further studies.

These sites are focused almost exclusively on bone healing, but in my opinion, more time consuming and difficult is the muscle recovery.

The first one I read was this one. The injury was quite different from mine (spiral and upper humerus), but the recovery process was quite similar. It did not prepare me for the tedious muscle recovery process.

But this skiing accident provides lots of details for the physical therapy process. The fracture was in four parts and the full recovery was painful. I'm at the point now when I realize that the fracture is not the main problem, regaining motion and strength is. The patient, "doogiedoc," has been a great source of inspiration for me. His determination has been astonishing (like wearing a hat during PT, so that the therapist won't see him cry and then not push him as hard).

Here is another one, which gives a financial perspective. The patient is a business owner, and his accident turned out to be quite taxing for his work.

This link provides a vast amount of accounts, some are quite disturbing, the non-union cases, particular, as when you wait for two months and then realize that surgery will be necessary.  It kept reminding me that this is a serious injury and things can go wrong, but also that I've been lucky thus far.

Here is another one I just discovered from the site discussbodybuilding. It contains a large number of accounts, especially spiral fractures caused by arm wrestling. The great advantage is its large number of x-ray images, and wide range of treatments and PT experiences.