I Broke My Wrist As A Kid, And Now It’s Starting To Hurt Again! Why?

I got another email from a Rescue Fan that asked about pain in the wrist that has recently become very bad.  He had injured the scaphoid bone in his wrist as a teenager, got a cast, took it off prematurely and then just recently began to really feel pain, numbness and discomfort in the same area.  I emailed him back and then thought there may be other’s with the same question due to the popularity of this type of injury. Here’s my email back to him.  I hope it helps.

I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through so much discomfort.  I looked up your injury and though nothing has told me anything you didn’t already know about this type of injury I’m including a video that may help refresh your memory.

In regards to the injury causing more problems.  You are always welcome to request a second opinion and may even want to find a good “sports medicine” Ortho Doctor.  It could be a number of things causing the pain but one reason is due to the possibility of developing “traumatic arthritis”, it could be Simple immobilization in a cast will not lead to healing of the bone. This scaphoid bone is particularly prone to this for several reasons: there is the possibility of the fracture being missed at the initial injury leading to a delay in treatment; secondly, the bone has a poor blood supply. The fact that it is inside the joint and is constantly being bathed by synovial fluid also contributes to the development of a nonunion. A nonunion, in other words, is a failure on the part of the patient’s bone to complete the healing process. A “false joint” occurs at the nonunion since the ends of the broken scaphoid are attached to ligaments at each end of the bone, further separating the fracture and preventing healing(http://www.arthroscopy.com/sp04013.htm). This can only be verified via thorough investigation by a qualified physician. In the mean time, rest, ice, elevation when possible and maybe even a splint of some sort can help to immobilize while on the way to the doctor to get to the bottom of the issue.

I hope this helps and I hope you’ll let me know what you find out.

Best Wishes,

Roy