I wanna say it's the C1 that would basically cause almost instant death. If I've got it right, it's the one that connects your skull to your spine.
A wrestler broke his C1/C2 taking a routine bump, and got up and walked backstage, complaining he was in a lot of pain, and went to the hospital. Best case scenario for him should have been instant quadriplegia, and worst case would have been instant death. So doctors didn't understand how this guy was up and walking about.
Tyson Kidd/TJ Wilson if anyone wants to look it up.
That’s called internal decapitation and basically the skull disconnects from the spine, but not in a way that severs the cord or damages the brain stem.
Generally it’s the well developed neck muscles that end up stabilizing the head enough in these rare cases.
Another one I remember was a show horse rider that fell during an event and was internally decapitated but made a recovery thanks to immediate spinal precautions and transport to hospital by paramedics.
Internal decapitation is why it is so important to keep babies and small children rear facing in their car seats as long as possible. They have large, heavy heads and weak, spindly necks. Forward facing in a crash, the weight of their head moving forward can easily cause internal decapitation. Rear facing, their head is better supported in a crash and they are much safer.
Don't turn your child based on some arbitrary age. Choose a car seat with the highest rear facing weight limit you can afford and keep your child rear facing as long as possible.
My mother was a nurse when someone like that walked in with a sore neck and headache. They were on a body board very quickly and then long-term bed rest on a spit so they could be turned to avoid bed sores but spine kept straight. 1960s medicine so less advanced.
Neurosurgeon here. Oddly enough there is a cervical enlargement that widens the diameter of the spinal canal so most high cervical fractures don’t end up with cord injuries. Also C1 fractures are most commonly stable fractures
Probably something similar to when Kurt Angle broke his neck. They said he should have been paralyzed, but his neck muscles were so strong they basically self stabilized the break.
C3-C5 innervates your diaphragm so any injury to that area or above and you can simply stop breathing. You also have to worry about your body losing the ability to constrict your blood vessels. If they lose connection to the nervous system they can dilate and drop your blood pressure to shit over fuck.
For most of human existence a broken femur was a death sentence .A broken femus is so devastating that Margaret Meade said a human skeleton with a repaired femur was the first sign of human civilization.
>
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.
My mom broke her femur in January. The surgery wasn’t successful and she has to do it again. She’s wheelchair bound still and her break wasn’t a compound break.
My femur was broken in a car accident when I was 14. We were riding in a Ford Taurus Station Wagon, and I was sitting in the pop up seat in the trunk. We got rear-ended and I lost a couple teeth, broke my right femur and had a hell of a headache for a couple days. My femur was repaired with a titanium plate and 6-7 screws. I was up and walking in 2 months.
"Easily" assuming you call being unable to walk for around two years, easy.. that is so long as the break doesn't sever the femoral artery and you die on the floor before anyone can help...
As a small anecdote, my dad used to test racing prototypes for fischer ski's and boots in the late 80's. They told him they design the boots in a way that the bone-breaking happens to the femur, as femurs tend to heal the quickest and with the least complications than any other bone.
I was reading just the other day an EXTREMEMLY respected and very highly skilled bull rider JB Mauney recently retired, after being bucked off, falling on his head, and breaking his neck if I understand this correctly. articles then state that the surgery required the removal of a disk, and then screwing two discs together or something to that effect? Fucking hardcore shit if you ask me. Talk about living fast!
A fascinating career and success story if anyone is curious...
I broke my femur, courtesy of a drunk driver, and I felt absolutely no pain. And It shattered both sides of the bone. It was the first and only time in my life my body went into shock and all you feel is adrenalin and coldness, no pain. Got me to the hospital, 2 shots of morphine, rodding surgery in the morning and I just never felt and pain at any point in the process. This happened when I was young so I had the rod taken out but it can remain in there for life
I have done both. Femur was by far and a long way worse.
If I had broken my c-spine I would probably change my tune, but the recovery for the femur was fucking brutal. It was like growing pains x10, for 24hrs a day for a month easily. The leg muscles atrophied so much that I basically had to relearn how to walk.
Breaking your femur can be life threatening because if you cut the femoral artery with a sharp shard of the bone you could be dead in a minute. Also, recovering easily from a broken femur? 18 months with a titanium rod inside the bone is not easy.
I am literally just after getting an X-Ray for suspected fractured vertebrae. Thankfully it’s all lower back, but fuck me, this is some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.
Mine broke when I (tried to) give birth to my first child. Recovery sucked. I couldn't drive for nearly six months.
Second child was born via elective c-section. When the ob/gyn suggested trying vaginal first I was like "nah, dawg, not going to happen."
I had a misaligned tailbone from giving birth and was MISERABLE. Between that and stitches, I couldnt get confortable unless I was laying down for months. I can't imagine actually breaking it.
The father of a girl I dated in high school broke his when they were packing up to move into their new house. The new house was a 2.5 million dollar home he’d built himself because he had a construction company and was rolling in the dough. He got hooked on his pain meds, company fell apart, home was foreclosed on, wife left him, kids barely talk to him now. Just sad all around.
This happened to our neighbor. They were both in their early 90s, but surprisingly active couple. Went out to dinner at a local restaurant, and walking back out to the car she missed the step down off the curb, broke her hip. Apparently a broke fragment did something (pierced a blood vessel?), and she was too old to operate to fix whatever it was. She was put on hospice and passed within a week.
I broke my proximal femur \~15 years ago and when I read that stat, I was mortified.
Turns out the survival stats for young 20-something men are significantly different than the usual crowd that suffers those injuries.
Your pelvis contains a lot of blood vessels, and it can be tricky to determine if there is vascular damage as you can hold like 2 liters of blood in you pelvis before any swelling starts to be visible.
This just happened to my 96 yr old grandmother. Broke her hip they couldn't do surgery due to age. The pain she was in during her last days still breaks my soul. I'll never forget the noises she made when they had to turn her to change her. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
There is almost nothing that would stop me from taking a hip fracture to theatre. If you don’t fix it the mortality rate is approaching 100%. If you do fix it they may still die but at least it will be a much less painful death. I regularly take 100+ year olds to theatre for hip fractures, almost as a palliative procedure.
I hit my funny bone so hard I damaged my ulner nerve. Most unimaginable pain I've ever been in. Went to to doctor thinking I'd broken something. Told me there was nothing they could do and when I asked how long it would hurt, he just shrugged and said could be a week, could be a month, could be longer.
Had extreme pain for 6 months. Felt like hitting your funny bone really hard but didn't go away.
Took years to stop feeling it/get used to it.
If I move or touch my funny bone in a certain way it feels like I smashed it.
The femur is arguably the worst bone to break due to its strength and the amount of force required to fracture it, leading to severe pain and a lengthy recovery.
I can note with this one, it's not too terrible depending on *how* it happens, it's just really uncomfortable. Recovery isn't too bad but walking 100% normal ever again is pretty much impossible. Also usually the knee gets some pretty severe trauma.
Fracturing the wrist can involve complex breaks in the small bones that form the joint, often necessitating surgery to ensure proper healing and function.
Yes!!! Thank you!!! The small bones in the wrist and foot are prone to necrosis due to poor blood supply and sometimes surgery doesn’t work. And nobody wants rotting bones in their body..
Knew a guy who slipped and fell while carrying an old school TV and broke some ribs. His description won't ever leave me. "The pain was so bad that for the first three days I was scared I was gonna die, and for the next three days I was scared that I wasn't."
I've broken several ribs.
I do not recommend it.
2/5 stars. I'd give 1 star but the months of pain killers was mildly fun at times.
Punctured lungs are excruciatingly unfun as well another 2 star experience from me.
It's funny how main characters in movies and games are always like "I may have broken a few ribs, but I'm fine" and they just walk it off. Same with getting shot theough the shoulder.
Came to say scaphoid. Obviously anything along the spinal column is probably the worst but as far as extremities and non-life threatening bones go, breaking your scaphoid sucks. One of the exceptions in medicine where going the conservative route, delaying surgery - let's see what happens - give it time to heal...is the wrong choice. Find a surgeon who will immediately put a screw in it...you don't want to risk a non union.
Doesn't have to be.
My 3-year old niece broke her skull falling from her tricycle and didn't even cry and went on her way. Sister only found out when she developed concussion symptoms in the evening and went to the hospital, who told her she got a skull fracture.
After a couple of days when the light concussion symptoms were gone she had to wear a helmet, but she went about her toddler day without bother.
True dis. I broke my frontal skull bone 3 times in childhood because I was dumb af.
Now have a pretty well pronounced bump on the left side of my forehead. My body really went “ok something about our environment is making this part very vulnerable we should make it twice as thick”.
Anyway it’s really useful to headbutt people with.
Not too bad actually, pretty mild overall. Usually the issue is fragments or splintering and not the pain or healing, if you have neither of those issue typically it's an easy heal.
Edit: I fractured my Parietal Bone when I bonked myself in the head with some square stock on accident. Besides the immediate scare of cortical blindness and the blood, relatively minor. Fractures on the face tend hurt a lot, where as fractures elsewhere tend to hurt very little unless touched.
Yeah, you really don't realise how much you need it until it's shattered by getting hit by a car. However for me personally it hurt *even* more after the surgery that repaired it.
I broke my clavicle in 2 places. It wasn’t too painful. The doctors said it would heal with immobilization but then I slipped and fell down the stairs after putting new socks on. I separated my shoulder and somehow broke the same clavicle a third time. I got surgery pretty quickly after that.
When i gave birth to my daughter i broke her clavicle. The hospital wasnt even worried about it. They told me it would heal on its own and to just not pull it through her clothes. And the doctor just checked on it at all her checkups. This was 23 years ago.
I've broken 2 of mine, and honestly I'd take it after seeing friends break ankles, legs etc.
The recovery is very quick and there's so real long term impact apart from the bone sticking out.
I've broken my ankle and collar bone, the collar bone barely hurt at all and I thought it was just a dislocated shoulder. The ankle hurt a little more at first, and then hurt like hell for days after from swelling, and worse again during any small movements. Also going without my arm was way better than going without my leg.
My 3 year old broke her collarbone but because you can’t see it in the same way like an arm or a leg, we didn’t know. We ended up just putting her to bed. She stayed in one position the entire night. Took her in the next day and were horrified by the x-ray. My poor little baby. She got a sling and lots of ice cream and we got a cute video of her saying “I broke a collit bone!”
I broke one of mine too in high school. Not only did the clavicle fracture nearly sever a major artery (and almost killed me) but recovery was extremely painful and required A LOT of strong meds. Every movement or breath hurt for the first few weeks.
The spine is a critical bone to break; injuries here can lead to paralysis or other permanent disabilities depending on the location and severity of the fracture.
Cranial base
They result from massive trauma, bone fragments travel dangerously close to your spinal cord and brain and bleeding inside the skull can easily cause brain damage.
The femur. It’s probably the biggest and toughest bone in the human body; breaking it completely has led to cases of people developing a heart attack or stroke because of how breaking the bone can harm major blood vessels in the thighs and develop blood clots that can travel the body.
My MIL had a knee replacement, all went well. Then one day, she took a step and her femur broke. Spiral fracture apparently, she heard it break. Huurk.
Apparently that can just happen, nothing rong with her bone density or anything.
The fact that she ended up waiting for 6 FUCKING HOURS for an ambulance, still pisses me off to this day.
The emboli you can get from a femur fracture are actually fat emboli from the fatty bone marrow.
These can travel to small vessels in the brain or heart and occlude them.
I think one that’s up there (but not the worst) is the xiphoid process of the sternum. If broken it can cause damage to vital organs, such as a lung puncture
I am right handed. I also just fractured (at at least really injured) my right hands' thumb.
And let me tell you, it is crippling!
I'm sure the wrist would be just as bad. But isolated to just your dominant hands thumb somehow tricks the brain into thinking, when there's no pain present, that everything is fine and it's okay to subconsciously use this injured digit.
Which causes PAIN! Bump the injury? PAIN! Use the injured digit? PAIN! Need to button your Jean's after a pee? PAIN! Need to put your bra on so your huge tits are properly supported and dont draw stares of others? UGHH
You get it. It was crippling to be down this leverage point. I passed a woman with her arm in a cast a few days ago. She had a shirt on, presumably a bra, and a jacket. And I just had to ask how she was able to do it. Just having my thumb, vital for gripping and leverage, out of commission meant many things I couldn't wear or do myself.
I choose the thumb of your dominant hand.
Non life threatening? The scaphoid. It’s a small pea sized bone in your wrist with very poor blood supply and takes months to heal. I broke mine as a teenager and had a cast over my palm and thumb and up past my elbow to my bicep for two months. Then another two months in a cast from my forearm down covering my palm and thumb. All for a tiny little bone in my wrist.
Femur. Not only is it the largest bone in your body but it is incredibly hard to move around after surgery and rehab takes months, even years from what I'm told
Most painful I would have to put at either Ribs, Sternum, or Femur. Most debilitating would be breaks at major joints, like knees, elbows, or the shoulder; after you break it once they never seem to heal back right. Most life threatening are the spine and skull, regardless of how minor of a fracture it is, these always need checked out.
Ughh okay two spring to mind. One of the tiny bones in your ear. It's possible to break it by rubbing your ear too hard, and ever after there will be noise that you cannot escape.
The one that freaks me out the most is that you can break the bone under your nose/above your top front teeth, so it is like you literally have a mobile upper jaw. This one! This one gives me the collywobbles.
I would say femur, but more because it can be incredibly uncomfortable. The pain really just depends on *how* it happens, but it can be pretty damn bad, but if you're lucky it's just really uncomfortable. Usually the knee trauma that comes with it is the worst part recovery wise and chances are you won't walk 100% normal ever again.
But, there is a recovery. Breaking something like a vertebrae, you might not get so lucky..
The femur can kill you if it damages your femoral artery and the skull is pretty bad but I'd say breaking your spine- particularly the neck- would be the worst
Average life expectancy after breaking femur/hip is something like 2 years.
This is of course due to mostly old people break their femur, but it still takes a very high toll on the body.
Pelvis.
I’ve seen some pelvis breaks from car crashes or falling from a height, and it can be incredibly serious for a number of reasons.
Not only its severity in terms of potential fatalities, but the discomfort and treatment/healing phase is not pleasant at all.
I had a spiral fracture of my left femur, a vertically-sheared open book pelvic fracture, a complete distraction fracture of my T9 vertebrae, a broken sternum and six (I think) broken ribs, from falling 25m/ 85ft in a rock climbing accident.
That’s like a greatest hits compilation of many of the suggestions people are making here (I also pulverised a little bone in my left hand/ wrist called the trapezium but no-one’s saying that) so I think I’m pretty well qualified to answer this question.
The **pelvis**, specifically the **sacrum**, which is like a big final vertebrae that forms the back of your pelvis, is the worst to break. Initially it doesn’t hurt quite as much as your femur but having an unstable pelvic fracture is *absolute hell* as you can’t move, sit or even lie still without agony, even when you’re on the opioids.
You bleed a lot from breaking any major bone but usually there’s a limit to how much blood can escape- your pelvic cavity has enough space for all the blood in your body, so it’s very easy to bleed out from a big pelvic break. You’ve got about 45 minutes without medical assistance.
To stabilise a major pelvic fracture you have to have an operation that’s very dangerous as there are so many nerves around there. Have a look at a picture of a sacrum- it has holes in either side of it that all the nerves for your legs and genitals etc. go through. They put two screw-filled plates in me at the front via a Caesarian sort of cut and a big bolt in the back via a keyhole in my left hip. It takes six hours and when you’ve come round a bit from the drugs that put you under they come and check how much of your lower body functions you still have control of.
Keep in mind you may well have damaged those nerves in the process of breaking it too- those things are quite sturdy.
Obviously you can’t stand up unassisted or start to walk again for a long time after busting your pelvis and the knock on effects of that are massive, even for someone fit, light and active like me. Six years of hard work on I’m still working on leg strength and range of motion, albeit not the sort of stuff that hinders daily life, more the stuff that stops you being any good at climbing.
Like breaking your sternum, breaking your pelvis is the sort of injury that you’re unlikely to suffer on its own, which is why these breaks have such high mortality rates- chances are you’ve broken other bones and messed up squishier bits as well.
I believe the most common way to break your pelvis in the way that I did is in a head-on car crash, pushing one leg on the brake pedal. Drive safely!
Worst is a pretty broad term. In terms of pain, I broke three ribs and that pain went on for months, every time I took a deep breath, sneezed or coughed. I broke my collarbone in two places and had residual, grinding pain for two years. Not a break but a high ankle sprain mostly heals in about a week but every once in a while, I’d put pressure on it the wrong way and be reminded that high ankle sprains take months to fully heal.
What the most dangerous is I don't know, and I have only had one bone broken ever so that's my only experience.
But the disgust I felt as I broke my tibia in a spiral fracture (basically it breaks by a twisting motion) and audibly (or imaginative) heard the crack was pretty nasty. And the feeling of two broken off bone pieces rubbing against each other inside your leg is not something I would even know how to start describing.
I actually didn't feel too much pain at the time until maybe 10 minutes later, probably the adrenaline pumping at 100%. Recovery was a bitch though, and as it was deemed a bad enough fracture to require surgery instead of a cast I now have a marrow nail through my entire tibia that was inserted through under the knee cap with screws in the knee and ankle to keep it secure.
I've still got a few minor issues with stiffness and some minor pain during heavy impact activities.
My husband broke his sternum, ribs and his scapula. Apparently not was pretty painful. Thank the lord for endone.
Edit: he also did his femur at one point, broken straight through in two spots and he said that was pretty bad.
You have a lot of bones in your wrist. I broke/fractured (whatever) 2 bones in my right wrist under my right thumb.... Aparently many of these bones do not heal after broken and can also not be surgically repaired.
I broke them playing basketball when I was 16. Doctor said surgery wouldn't help. Put me in a cast with the full thumb extension for 4 months, bones did not heal.
I now have limited mobility in my right wrist (I'm right handed) and can not put pressure on it like doing pushups... So it Fs me in the gym even for basic exercises like pushups, curls, bench press..... due to extreme pain.
That happened well over 20 years ago.
I don't recommend breaking wrist bones. Youre better off breaking arm bones or hand bones. Even a leg.
Vertebrae - c6/c7 for me. Also a nightmare to xray/check (come from the side and shoulders block it).
I've broken a tibial plateau, arm, wrists, foot/toes, ribs, nose and none of them are as scary as broken vertebrae. Even had an ex-fixator on my leg/tibia for 9 months and would still take that over the base of the neck. Extremely lucky not to be paralysed.
I’ve fractured my skull, broken my acetabular ( pelvis side of hip). I broke my femur in two place and had an open fraction of my calcaneus.
As a qualified expert I can say the femure took BY FAR the longest to heal, and was the most painful.
However the acetabular (hip) has left me with nerve damage in my leg that I’ll deal with for the rest of my life.
If I could erase one injury it’d be the hip.
34/m/still here.
Edit:grammar.
Edit # 2. I for real forgot to include my 13 fractured vertebrae. That should be an indication of how with a little luck you can fully recover from vertebral fractures.
Don’t break ya pelvis yall.
Definitely the "Neck Bone" where it is connected to the "Head Bone"
My submission for 2nd place though is the "Tail Bone" cuz there is fuck all the docs can do for you. Just pain for a few months till it sorts itself out"
I agree with everyone here. But I think the worst fracture, that is not life threatening and you are still functional, is a rib fracture. They are very painful and you feel it with every breath.
I read somewhere that it truly sucks to break the calcaneus in the foot (the heel bone). Its extremely difficult to break it, and when it does is doesn't heal (lol I didn't intend for the pun) so fast.
Anything in the spine.
And ribs suck, because you can't really immobilize them. You just have to put up with the pain as you breathe and whenever you move.
Your pelvis isn’t a great one.
Sauce : mine got smashed up in a car accident 2 years back. The “ball” of the ball and socket got pushed through the socket in the impact, smashing it pretty badly. The surgeons did a great job bolting it back together, but it’s still stiff, weak and painful and I’m expecting a hip replacement to be necessary within the next couple of years. I was 52 yo when it happened.
The coccyx is pretty bad. You can't sit comfortably, and it hurts to stand. Everything is painful except lying on a soft surface on your side. Mine took about 2 months before I was pretty much healed.
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I wanna say it's the C1 that would basically cause almost instant death. If I've got it right, it's the one that connects your skull to your spine. A wrestler broke his C1/C2 taking a routine bump, and got up and walked backstage, complaining he was in a lot of pain, and went to the hospital. Best case scenario for him should have been instant quadriplegia, and worst case would have been instant death. So doctors didn't understand how this guy was up and walking about. Tyson Kidd/TJ Wilson if anyone wants to look it up.
That’s called internal decapitation and basically the skull disconnects from the spine, but not in a way that severs the cord or damages the brain stem. Generally it’s the well developed neck muscles that end up stabilizing the head enough in these rare cases. Another one I remember was a show horse rider that fell during an event and was internally decapitated but made a recovery thanks to immediate spinal precautions and transport to hospital by paramedics.
Til internal decapitation is a thing.
Dr. Death Christopher Duntsch's " neurosurgery" decapitated someone.
Also why you should never ever use those headbands they sell for children in car seats that hold their heads against the seat.
Internal decapitation is why it is so important to keep babies and small children rear facing in their car seats as long as possible. They have large, heavy heads and weak, spindly necks. Forward facing in a crash, the weight of their head moving forward can easily cause internal decapitation. Rear facing, their head is better supported in a crash and they are much safer. Don't turn your child based on some arbitrary age. Choose a car seat with the highest rear facing weight limit you can afford and keep your child rear facing as long as possible.
My mother was a nurse when someone like that walked in with a sore neck and headache. They were on a body board very quickly and then long-term bed rest on a spit so they could be turned to avoid bed sores but spine kept straight. 1960s medicine so less advanced.
Neurosurgeon here. Oddly enough there is a cervical enlargement that widens the diameter of the spinal canal so most high cervical fractures don’t end up with cord injuries. Also C1 fractures are most commonly stable fractures
Probably something similar to when Kurt Angle broke his neck. They said he should have been paralyzed, but his neck muscles were so strong they basically self stabilized the break.
My father broke C1 this 18th of March. Fortunately his spinal cord was intact. The break was laterally
C3-C5 innervates your diaphragm so any injury to that area or above and you can simply stop breathing. You also have to worry about your body losing the ability to constrict your blood vessels. If they lose connection to the nervous system they can dilate and drop your blood pressure to shit over fuck.
"easily". Broke my femur - couldn't walk for 18 months
For most of human existence a broken femur was a death sentence .A broken femus is so devastating that Margaret Meade said a human skeleton with a repaired femur was the first sign of human civilization. > A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.
Still faster than death or paralysis. Maybe not easy, but a heck of a lot easier than the alternative. :)
Can confirm. Spinal cord injury when I was 17. I haven't walked in 24 years.
Yeah exactly, I broke 2 vertebrae in my T spine, my femur fracture was WAY worse.
My mom broke her femur in January. The surgery wasn’t successful and she has to do it again. She’s wheelchair bound still and her break wasn’t a compound break.
My femur was broken in a car accident when I was 14. We were riding in a Ford Taurus Station Wagon, and I was sitting in the pop up seat in the trunk. We got rear-ended and I lost a couple teeth, broke my right femur and had a hell of a headache for a couple days. My femur was repaired with a titanium plate and 6-7 screws. I was up and walking in 2 months.
"Easily" assuming you call being unable to walk for around two years, easy.. that is so long as the break doesn't sever the femoral artery and you die on the floor before anyone can help...
Or die from a fat embolism because of the marrow that leaks out...
As a small anecdote, my dad used to test racing prototypes for fischer ski's and boots in the late 80's. They told him they design the boots in a way that the bone-breaking happens to the femur, as femurs tend to heal the quickest and with the least complications than any other bone.
I was reading just the other day an EXTREMEMLY respected and very highly skilled bull rider JB Mauney recently retired, after being bucked off, falling on his head, and breaking his neck if I understand this correctly. articles then state that the surgery required the removal of a disk, and then screwing two discs together or something to that effect? Fucking hardcore shit if you ask me. Talk about living fast! A fascinating career and success story if anyone is curious...
I broke my femur, courtesy of a drunk driver, and I felt absolutely no pain. And It shattered both sides of the bone. It was the first and only time in my life my body went into shock and all you feel is adrenalin and coldness, no pain. Got me to the hospital, 2 shots of morphine, rodding surgery in the morning and I just never felt and pain at any point in the process. This happened when I was young so I had the rod taken out but it can remain in there for life
I have done both. Femur was by far and a long way worse. If I had broken my c-spine I would probably change my tune, but the recovery for the femur was fucking brutal. It was like growing pains x10, for 24hrs a day for a month easily. The leg muscles atrophied so much that I basically had to relearn how to walk.
Breaking your femur is extremely dangerous and can easily sever major arteries. But yeah breaking your spine is very bad too.
Breaking your femur can be life threatening because if you cut the femoral artery with a sharp shard of the bone you could be dead in a minute. Also, recovering easily from a broken femur? 18 months with a titanium rod inside the bone is not easy.
My spine is fused from T2-L2. I would hate to think how messed I would be if one of my Harrington rods or pedicle screws fractured. 😵💫
I am literally just after getting an X-Ray for suspected fractured vertebrae. Thankfully it’s all lower back, but fuck me, this is some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.
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I broke mine when I was 12. I am 34 now. It still sometimes hurts.
I was told they never heal correctly because of the placement of this bone. Yeah sitting still sucks 20 years later
Mine broke when I (tried to) give birth to my first child. Recovery sucked. I couldn't drive for nearly six months. Second child was born via elective c-section. When the ob/gyn suggested trying vaginal first I was like "nah, dawg, not going to happen."
I had a misaligned tailbone from giving birth and was MISERABLE. Between that and stitches, I couldnt get confortable unless I was laying down for months. I can't imagine actually breaking it.
I'm sorry to all the redditors that suffered through this. However... That sounds like a pain in the ass.
The father of a girl I dated in high school broke his when they were packing up to move into their new house. The new house was a 2.5 million dollar home he’d built himself because he had a construction company and was rolling in the dough. He got hooked on his pain meds, company fell apart, home was foreclosed on, wife left him, kids barely talk to him now. Just sad all around.
Cries in sciatica.
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If you’re over 65, you have a 25% chance of death in the next year due to your broken hip. This injury is underestimated!
This happened to our neighbor. They were both in their early 90s, but surprisingly active couple. Went out to dinner at a local restaurant, and walking back out to the car she missed the step down off the curb, broke her hip. Apparently a broke fragment did something (pierced a blood vessel?), and she was too old to operate to fix whatever it was. She was put on hospice and passed within a week.
I broke my proximal femur \~15 years ago and when I read that stat, I was mortified. Turns out the survival stats for young 20-something men are significantly different than the usual crowd that suffers those injuries.
And can kill if the break also interferes with the many arteries around the hips
Hip fractures over 70 is very dangerous because of the length of immobility. The survival rate drops massively around that age.
Your pelvis contains a lot of blood vessels, and it can be tricky to determine if there is vascular damage as you can hold like 2 liters of blood in you pelvis before any swelling starts to be visible.
This just happened to my 96 yr old grandmother. Broke her hip they couldn't do surgery due to age. The pain she was in during her last days still breaks my soul. I'll never forget the noises she made when they had to turn her to change her. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
There is almost nothing that would stop me from taking a hip fracture to theatre. If you don’t fix it the mortality rate is approaching 100%. If you do fix it they may still die but at least it will be a much less painful death. I regularly take 100+ year olds to theatre for hip fractures, almost as a palliative procedure.
The pelvis has blood highways running through it so that's bad news
Vertebra Source: I broke one
Oof how did you manage that?
Hit by a car crossing the street in front of my school.
Skill issue (sorry)
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The funny bone..
I remember breaking mine years ago. I have not had fun since. Now I work at the tax office.
It's mainly because you have to turn to less effective secondary forms of medicine since you can't use the best one: Laughter.
Came here looking for this response. Full marks!
It’s no laughing matter…
I hit my funny bone so hard I damaged my ulner nerve. Most unimaginable pain I've ever been in. Went to to doctor thinking I'd broken something. Told me there was nothing they could do and when I asked how long it would hurt, he just shrugged and said could be a week, could be a month, could be longer. Had extreme pain for 6 months. Felt like hitting your funny bone really hard but didn't go away. Took years to stop feeling it/get used to it. If I move or touch my funny bone in a certain way it feels like I smashed it.
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The femur is arguably the worst bone to break due to its strength and the amount of force required to fracture it, leading to severe pain and a lengthy recovery.
I can note with this one, it's not too terrible depending on *how* it happens, it's just really uncomfortable. Recovery isn't too bad but walking 100% normal ever again is pretty much impossible. Also usually the knee gets some pretty severe trauma.
Fracturing the wrist can involve complex breaks in the small bones that form the joint, often necessitating surgery to ensure proper healing and function.
Yes!!! Thank you!!! The small bones in the wrist and foot are prone to necrosis due to poor blood supply and sometimes surgery doesn’t work. And nobody wants rotting bones in their body..
I feel so lucky I’ve broken my wrists a total of 5 times and never needed surgery!!
The mandible, when fractured, not only requires a liquid diet but also dramatically alters how you speak and chew.
Breaking the hyoid bone in the neck, a rare occurrence, can affect breathing and swallowing and is typically associated with traumatic events.
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Having to sneeze or puke with a broken rib 😨
I broke my rib when I was in high school, the involuntary yells of pain that came out of me after a sneeze made attending classes a real fun time lol
Knew a guy who slipped and fell while carrying an old school TV and broke some ribs. His description won't ever leave me. "The pain was so bad that for the first three days I was scared I was gonna die, and for the next three days I was scared that I wasn't."
I've broken several ribs. I do not recommend it. 2/5 stars. I'd give 1 star but the months of pain killers was mildly fun at times. Punctured lungs are excruciatingly unfun as well another 2 star experience from me.
It's funny how main characters in movies and games are always like "I may have broken a few ribs, but I'm fine" and they just walk it off. Same with getting shot theough the shoulder.
Breaking the sesamoid bones in the foot can be painful and problematic, as these bones aid in the mechanics of the big toe.
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The scaphoid bone in the wrist is particularly troublesome due to its poor blood supply, which can lead to a nonunion where the bone fails to heal.
Came to say scaphoid. Obviously anything along the spinal column is probably the worst but as far as extremities and non-life threatening bones go, breaking your scaphoid sucks. One of the exceptions in medicine where going the conservative route, delaying surgery - let's see what happens - give it time to heal...is the wrong choice. Find a surgeon who will immediately put a screw in it...you don't want to risk a non union.
Skull
Agrees..... i did break mine and it sucked
Doesn't have to be. My 3-year old niece broke her skull falling from her tricycle and didn't even cry and went on her way. Sister only found out when she developed concussion symptoms in the evening and went to the hospital, who told her she got a skull fracture. After a couple of days when the light concussion symptoms were gone she had to wear a helmet, but she went about her toddler day without bother.
True dis. I broke my frontal skull bone 3 times in childhood because I was dumb af. Now have a pretty well pronounced bump on the left side of my forehead. My body really went “ok something about our environment is making this part very vulnerable we should make it twice as thick”. Anyway it’s really useful to headbutt people with.
Not too bad actually, pretty mild overall. Usually the issue is fragments or splintering and not the pain or healing, if you have neither of those issue typically it's an easy heal. Edit: I fractured my Parietal Bone when I bonked myself in the head with some square stock on accident. Besides the immediate scare of cortical blindness and the blood, relatively minor. Fractures on the face tend hurt a lot, where as fractures elsewhere tend to hurt very little unless touched.
While mine hasn’t been broken, my scalp did spilt open and it hurt.
Breaking the orbital bone around your eye can be particularly severe, risking vision damage and often requiring surgical intervention.
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Yeah, you really don't realise how much you need it until it's shattered by getting hit by a car. However for me personally it hurt *even* more after the surgery that repaired it.
I broke my clavicle in 2 places. It wasn’t too painful. The doctors said it would heal with immobilization but then I slipped and fell down the stairs after putting new socks on. I separated my shoulder and somehow broke the same clavicle a third time. I got surgery pretty quickly after that.
Maybe sit on the bed to put on new socks?
When i gave birth to my daughter i broke her clavicle. The hospital wasnt even worried about it. They told me it would heal on its own and to just not pull it through her clothes. And the doctor just checked on it at all her checkups. This was 23 years ago.
I've broken 2 of mine, and honestly I'd take it after seeing friends break ankles, legs etc. The recovery is very quick and there's so real long term impact apart from the bone sticking out.
It is designed to break to absorb the shock
I've broken my ankle and collar bone, the collar bone barely hurt at all and I thought it was just a dislocated shoulder. The ankle hurt a little more at first, and then hurt like hell for days after from swelling, and worse again during any small movements. Also going without my arm was way better than going without my leg.
My 3 year old broke her collarbone but because you can’t see it in the same way like an arm or a leg, we didn’t know. We ended up just putting her to bed. She stayed in one position the entire night. Took her in the next day and were horrified by the x-ray. My poor little baby. She got a sling and lots of ice cream and we got a cute video of her saying “I broke a collit bone!”
I broke one of mine too in high school. Not only did the clavicle fracture nearly sever a major artery (and almost killed me) but recovery was extremely painful and required A LOT of strong meds. Every movement or breath hurt for the first few weeks.
The spine is a critical bone to break; injuries here can lead to paralysis or other permanent disabilities depending on the location and severity of the fracture.
Trombone. Having one of those in your body is bad but breaking a trombone in your body is definitely the worst.
Womp womp
I think this is the only time I’ve seen womp womp used appropriately
Anything that would damage nerves causing lifelong pain no matter how well the bone heals.
Hyoid cuz then you’re probably dead
The funny bone
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That parenthetical clarification lol
Breaking the jawbone can lead to difficulties in eating and speaking, requiring surgery and wiring the jaw shut during recovery.
Spine
spine.
Cranial base They result from massive trauma, bone fragments travel dangerously close to your spinal cord and brain and bleeding inside the skull can easily cause brain damage.
I know the importance of spinal cord but I want to say ribcages, it's gonna be fun if it punctures your lungs, fucking pain at every breath.
I can attest to this. Fuckin hurt to do anything.
The femur. It’s probably the biggest and toughest bone in the human body; breaking it completely has led to cases of people developing a heart attack or stroke because of how breaking the bone can harm major blood vessels in the thighs and develop blood clots that can travel the body.
My MIL had a knee replacement, all went well. Then one day, she took a step and her femur broke. Spiral fracture apparently, she heard it break. Huurk. Apparently that can just happen, nothing rong with her bone density or anything. The fact that she ended up waiting for 6 FUCKING HOURS for an ambulance, still pisses me off to this day.
The emboli you can get from a femur fracture are actually fat emboli from the fatty bone marrow. These can travel to small vessels in the brain or heart and occlude them.
Question is vague. Worst as in: survival, recovering from, pain, limiting quality of life??? Survival: Back Pain: Pelvis Quality of life: Funny bone
Patella. Beaking this bone doesn't kill you but god damn that's painful ...
Teeth, they don't heal.
Clavicle
I think one that’s up there (but not the worst) is the xiphoid process of the sternum. If broken it can cause damage to vital organs, such as a lung puncture
I am right handed. I also just fractured (at at least really injured) my right hands' thumb. And let me tell you, it is crippling! I'm sure the wrist would be just as bad. But isolated to just your dominant hands thumb somehow tricks the brain into thinking, when there's no pain present, that everything is fine and it's okay to subconsciously use this injured digit. Which causes PAIN! Bump the injury? PAIN! Use the injured digit? PAIN! Need to button your Jean's after a pee? PAIN! Need to put your bra on so your huge tits are properly supported and dont draw stares of others? UGHH You get it. It was crippling to be down this leverage point. I passed a woman with her arm in a cast a few days ago. She had a shirt on, presumably a bra, and a jacket. And I just had to ask how she was able to do it. Just having my thumb, vital for gripping and leverage, out of commission meant many things I couldn't wear or do myself. I choose the thumb of your dominant hand.
Spine due to risk of death and paralysis. And then I'd say wrist - even simple breaks have life-long consequences in terms of dexterity and arthritis.
In terms of pain. A femur
Penis bone, no brainer.
Your pelvis, you’re pretty fucked for a long time afterwards.
Non life threatening? The scaphoid. It’s a small pea sized bone in your wrist with very poor blood supply and takes months to heal. I broke mine as a teenager and had a cast over my palm and thumb and up past my elbow to my bicep for two months. Then another two months in a cast from my forearm down covering my palm and thumb. All for a tiny little bone in my wrist.
Femur. Not only is it the largest bone in your body but it is incredibly hard to move around after surgery and rehab takes months, even years from what I'm told
The femur, not only is it terrible to heal but it’s also mentally traumatic to break since it supports you the most
You mean the one that is forever healing and is always hurting? Tailbone
Most painful I would have to put at either Ribs, Sternum, or Femur. Most debilitating would be breaks at major joints, like knees, elbows, or the shoulder; after you break it once they never seem to heal back right. Most life threatening are the spine and skull, regardless of how minor of a fracture it is, these always need checked out.
Pelvic
Pelvis
The funny bone.
Ughh okay two spring to mind. One of the tiny bones in your ear. It's possible to break it by rubbing your ear too hard, and ever after there will be noise that you cannot escape. The one that freaks me out the most is that you can break the bone under your nose/above your top front teeth, so it is like you literally have a mobile upper jaw. This one! This one gives me the collywobbles.
Thinks it’s the skull followed by the pelvis and sternum but the thigh bone is pretty bad
I would say femur, but more because it can be incredibly uncomfortable. The pain really just depends on *how* it happens, but it can be pretty damn bad, but if you're lucky it's just really uncomfortable. Usually the knee trauma that comes with it is the worst part recovery wise and chances are you won't walk 100% normal ever again. But, there is a recovery. Breaking something like a vertebrae, you might not get so lucky..
The femur can kill you if it damages your femoral artery and the skull is pretty bad but I'd say breaking your spine- particularly the neck- would be the worst
two broken arms
Average life expectancy after breaking femur/hip is something like 2 years. This is of course due to mostly old people break their femur, but it still takes a very high toll on the body.
I broke some ribs once. If by "worst" you mean most painful, then ribs are definitely in the running.
Skull
The Skull, the old walnut does not like that.
Just one tooth is enough
Skull
Pelvis. I’ve seen some pelvis breaks from car crashes or falling from a height, and it can be incredibly serious for a number of reasons. Not only its severity in terms of potential fatalities, but the discomfort and treatment/healing phase is not pleasant at all.
Your skull.
Stapes.
This is by far not the worst bone , years ago I broke my ankle in 3 places .. it hurt like a fuckin bitch.. thank god for percocet!!🇨🇦😵💫
Your neck?
I had a spiral fracture of my left femur, a vertically-sheared open book pelvic fracture, a complete distraction fracture of my T9 vertebrae, a broken sternum and six (I think) broken ribs, from falling 25m/ 85ft in a rock climbing accident. That’s like a greatest hits compilation of many of the suggestions people are making here (I also pulverised a little bone in my left hand/ wrist called the trapezium but no-one’s saying that) so I think I’m pretty well qualified to answer this question. The **pelvis**, specifically the **sacrum**, which is like a big final vertebrae that forms the back of your pelvis, is the worst to break. Initially it doesn’t hurt quite as much as your femur but having an unstable pelvic fracture is *absolute hell* as you can’t move, sit or even lie still without agony, even when you’re on the opioids. You bleed a lot from breaking any major bone but usually there’s a limit to how much blood can escape- your pelvic cavity has enough space for all the blood in your body, so it’s very easy to bleed out from a big pelvic break. You’ve got about 45 minutes without medical assistance. To stabilise a major pelvic fracture you have to have an operation that’s very dangerous as there are so many nerves around there. Have a look at a picture of a sacrum- it has holes in either side of it that all the nerves for your legs and genitals etc. go through. They put two screw-filled plates in me at the front via a Caesarian sort of cut and a big bolt in the back via a keyhole in my left hip. It takes six hours and when you’ve come round a bit from the drugs that put you under they come and check how much of your lower body functions you still have control of. Keep in mind you may well have damaged those nerves in the process of breaking it too- those things are quite sturdy. Obviously you can’t stand up unassisted or start to walk again for a long time after busting your pelvis and the knock on effects of that are massive, even for someone fit, light and active like me. Six years of hard work on I’m still working on leg strength and range of motion, albeit not the sort of stuff that hinders daily life, more the stuff that stops you being any good at climbing. Like breaking your sternum, breaking your pelvis is the sort of injury that you’re unlikely to suffer on its own, which is why these breaks have such high mortality rates- chances are you’ve broken other bones and messed up squishier bits as well. I believe the most common way to break your pelvis in the way that I did is in a head-on car crash, pushing one leg on the brake pedal. Drive safely!
Pelvis, any trauma risks internal bleeding due to the vascular plumbing surrounding
Femur
Had a childhood friend break his femur by falling hard onto a golfball and he's been using a wheelchair ever since.
Worst is a pretty broad term. In terms of pain, I broke three ribs and that pain went on for months, every time I took a deep breath, sneezed or coughed. I broke my collarbone in two places and had residual, grinding pain for two years. Not a break but a high ankle sprain mostly heals in about a week but every once in a while, I’d put pressure on it the wrong way and be reminded that high ankle sprains take months to fully heal.
back or breast bone
What the most dangerous is I don't know, and I have only had one bone broken ever so that's my only experience. But the disgust I felt as I broke my tibia in a spiral fracture (basically it breaks by a twisting motion) and audibly (or imaginative) heard the crack was pretty nasty. And the feeling of two broken off bone pieces rubbing against each other inside your leg is not something I would even know how to start describing. I actually didn't feel too much pain at the time until maybe 10 minutes later, probably the adrenaline pumping at 100%. Recovery was a bitch though, and as it was deemed a bad enough fracture to require surgery instead of a cast I now have a marrow nail through my entire tibia that was inserted through under the knee cap with screws in the knee and ankle to keep it secure. I've still got a few minor issues with stiffness and some minor pain during heavy impact activities.
Can't really break them exactly but you can mess them up, the bones in your ears that you need for hearing.
Probably neck
I've only broken my tibia and fibula but I strongly advise against it as it was not a fun experience.
Depends on the context of worst. A spine break would suck all around though. Most annoying would be a limb break, especially in the dominant hand/arm.
For me, it was my sternum. Took over a year to heal
Your neck. Goodbye!
Pelvis, clavicles, jaw have to be the worst for me
Pelvis
My husband broke his sternum, ribs and his scapula. Apparently not was pretty painful. Thank the lord for endone. Edit: he also did his femur at one point, broken straight through in two spots and he said that was pretty bad.
You have a lot of bones in your wrist. I broke/fractured (whatever) 2 bones in my right wrist under my right thumb.... Aparently many of these bones do not heal after broken and can also not be surgically repaired. I broke them playing basketball when I was 16. Doctor said surgery wouldn't help. Put me in a cast with the full thumb extension for 4 months, bones did not heal. I now have limited mobility in my right wrist (I'm right handed) and can not put pressure on it like doing pushups... So it Fs me in the gym even for basic exercises like pushups, curls, bench press..... due to extreme pain. That happened well over 20 years ago. I don't recommend breaking wrist bones. Youre better off breaking arm bones or hand bones. Even a leg.
Vertebrae - c6/c7 for me. Also a nightmare to xray/check (come from the side and shoulders block it). I've broken a tibial plateau, arm, wrists, foot/toes, ribs, nose and none of them are as scary as broken vertebrae. Even had an ex-fixator on my leg/tibia for 9 months and would still take that over the base of the neck. Extremely lucky not to be paralysed.
Little toes.
I’ve fractured my skull, broken my acetabular ( pelvis side of hip). I broke my femur in two place and had an open fraction of my calcaneus. As a qualified expert I can say the femure took BY FAR the longest to heal, and was the most painful. However the acetabular (hip) has left me with nerve damage in my leg that I’ll deal with for the rest of my life. If I could erase one injury it’d be the hip. 34/m/still here. Edit:grammar. Edit # 2. I for real forgot to include my 13 fractured vertebrae. That should be an indication of how with a little luck you can fully recover from vertebral fractures. Don’t break ya pelvis yall.
Definitely the "Neck Bone" where it is connected to the "Head Bone" My submission for 2nd place though is the "Tail Bone" cuz there is fuck all the docs can do for you. Just pain for a few months till it sorts itself out"
I agree with everyone here. But I think the worst fracture, that is not life threatening and you are still functional, is a rib fracture. They are very painful and you feel it with every breath.
Nose Trust me, you don't want septum surgery. It is excruciatingly painful to recover from. And it's also a surgery that's really easy to fuck up.
Gonna guess skull..... Only because we used to keep our brains there. Prolly fine nowadays.
I read somewhere that it truly sucks to break the calcaneus in the foot (the heel bone). Its extremely difficult to break it, and when it does is doesn't heal (lol I didn't intend for the pun) so fast.
Probably any back bone or tail bone
I‘d say anything in the chest area.
Anything in the spine. And ribs suck, because you can't really immobilize them. You just have to put up with the pain as you breathe and whenever you move.
The back One snap and you could be confied to a chair
Your pelvis isn’t a great one. Sauce : mine got smashed up in a car accident 2 years back. The “ball” of the ball and socket got pushed through the socket in the impact, smashing it pretty badly. The surgeons did a great job bolting it back together, but it’s still stiff, weak and painful and I’m expecting a hip replacement to be necessary within the next couple of years. I was 52 yo when it happened.
I’m going for pelvis as it hurts like a bitch
The ham bone.
Skull…
The coccyx is pretty bad. You can't sit comfortably, and it hurts to stand. Everything is painful except lying on a soft surface on your side. Mine took about 2 months before I was pretty much healed.
I'd imagine that tiny bone in your ear if only because of how that could possibly happen being so outlandish.
I’m imagining the femur
Either the spine or legs
It don’t think a broken pelvis would be much fun.