Anyone have medical hardware that bugs them?

[Steel]

Cause I do. I have a plate and 5 or 6 screws in my wrist from breaking it in a motorbike accident 6 months ago. I'll post the x-rays up later today when I get home. My problem is that I'm still in pain, and I believe that it's the hardware that's causing it. You'll be able to see how the tips of the screws poke out the other side of my radius, and i swear they are messing with my tendons that control my wrist. I don't feel pain except for when my wrist is bent any way forward and i need to put force on it to bend it back (if that makes any sense). It feels to be localized right where the screwtips would be poking out and i can also feel that tendon popping around when I bend my wrist back.

So my question is... has anyone had these sorts of problems and had their hardware subsequently removed? If so... does insurance cover it? I'm basically 97% in that wrist, I just want to get back to 100%

 

[classwife]

I don't have any interior metal...but a friend of mine had a plate put in his ankle...started bugging him...sure enough----he had a screw loose !

 

[Steel]

 

[classwife]

those screws...the tip is what's catching right !

That just can't be proper !

 

[FantWriter]

Can you go to another doctor and show them that x-ray? That looks just plain wrong.

I have stainless steel wires in my chest and a metal ring holding my replacement aortic valve. They look really weird on an x-ray (the wires look like twist-ties holding closed a garbage sack, and from the side, the ring looks like the muzzle of a shotgun). Fortunately, they've never given me any trouble.

 

[Steel]

Well I guess the screws have to go all the way through in order to get some purchase on the bone so they dont get all angly and such. But I want this thing out!

 

[FantWriter]

I can't speak of bones, because I'm not a doctor, but in both wood and metal, you have a stronger and more reliable hold if the tip does not break the opposite face. In wood, you ideally want the tip 1/2 the diameter of the screw away from the surface, in metal, a full diameter.

 

[Spence]

A couple of years ago I shattered my wrist and have a plate/screws similar to yours. I felt the sensations that you are describing, that "click" & feeling of needing to manipulate it when I extended it "too far". I remember it taking a good year for that to pass. If checking with another doctor would ease your mind, you should. But, mine took longer to heal than I expected (and way pass when the doctor said, "You're all fixed now.")