Pelvic stress fracture

6 weeks and no crutches? Pelvic bones are normally pretty strong, so it surprises me that your doctor is recommending standard stress fx treatment. I know a guy who had one during marathon training and he was on crutches for four weeks and couldn't run for another 8 (though I think he was allowed to bike and swim).

I broke my right pelvis and hip socket in a bike crash a few years ago as a 48-year old former runner. The fractures were severe and required 6.5 hours of surgery to repair and were much worse than a stress fracture. But getting in a pool, I believe, helped me greatly. Initially I was in a no-weight bearing situation, so floating in a pool was the only practical exercise I could think of. Once I was allowed to bear weight a bit, I did some pool-walking as well. None of this was easy: I weighed about 175 lbs at the time of the crash, ballooned to about 218 lbs after the surgery (the surge was due to water-retention - even my normally thin fingers got fat and, I'm not exaggerating, my scrotum was about the size of a soccer ball*), and by about ten days after the crash my weight plummeted to about 158 lbs (and I'm 6'3"). I looked like a refugee. I shivered just about every second in the water and wore a Lycra-like running jacket to try to retain warmth.

Anyway, getting in a pool could help a lot.

* I told all my friends that I got to shower naked in front of female nurses and, because I was so disgusted with my appearance, it wasn't even fun. Thankfully, I'm back to normal appearance-wise, but, unmarried and not a playboy, don't get to shower naked in front of any woman. :P

6 weeks is super short. I had a pubic ramus stress fracture and took four months off running. Even that was not enough, as I still had pain when starting up again with short run/walk intervals. A repeat MRI after a month of this showed that the original fracture site was still not healed, and I had developed another stress fracture nearby. I was then prescribed a bone stimulator and was fine after another four months off. Healing times for pelvic fractures can vary considerably, but 6 weeks seems overly optimistic.

I was allowed to do any non-impact exercise that didn't cause pain, so I cycled for at least 90 minutes a day to maintain my sanity and limit weight gain.

How you develop another fx? If you took 4 months off?

6 weeks seems really short. I am 5 months into an inferior pubic ramus sfx and my doctor still has not cleared me to run (non impact only after 3.5 months of no exercise). He said it will be possible at month 6 but it depends on how it is feeling. He has been treating it very conservatively but honestly, even at 5 months, there is still pain and discomfort from time to time when doing simple things such as sitting or laying down. From what I have learned, this is a very hard injury to heal and can take a long time unfortunately. Return to exercise shouldn't be rushed. As SFx said above, non-impact exercise is your friend as long as there is no pain associated with it.

The pelvis, the innominate bones plus sacrum, act like a single, solid ring...akin to a pretzel. You cannot break a pretzel in only one place and neither can you break the pelvis, under most circumstances, in one place. When one pelvic fracture is found, always look for a second one.

6 week recovery at least.

Sfxhelp wrote:

How you develop another fx? If you took 4 months off?

Probably by returning to running before the first one was fully healed. If that spot was unable to bear the load, it may have put more stress on another area of the pelvis that subsequently fractured.

It is confusing the way people talk about "recovery" from these stress fractures. I have a pubic ramus stress fracture and have been off running for about 6 months. During that time I did pool running and used a rowing machine. I did take a 4 week complete shut down off all activities. After 6 months of those activities an MRI shows the sfx has not healed.

What I've learned is that some injuries require more than just "not running" to heal, they require complete rest. Reading these boards it oftens sounds like people are doing a bunch of other activities after their diagnosis. I think they really mean they started doing those activities AFTER a rest period. There's a difference.