crunched ribs

[moose pit]

Rolled into a blind drop to find buddy unintentionally front surfing, thought I had momentum and the line clear then he got surged into me. Took the bow solid on the left side. Ribs are fucked, hurts to breathe and move, I'm hoping just bruised but in TGR fashion I figure post first figure out the injury later.

[Jethro]

Usually they do not do anything for ribs. Maybe just wrap them. I am not sure what that does other than limit lung expansion and pain.

If you are really fucked up, you will know it. A guy I know wrecked his road bike this summer and had to have surgery for broken and twisted rib fragments

[crackboy]

they don't wrap ribs raises the risk of pneumonia etc.

[Jethro]

they don't wrap ribs raises the risk of pneumonia etc.

I stand corrected. A quick google search confirmed crackboy's info. I just remembered my dad having that treatment, but that was probably 35 years ago.

[Jer]

All I got from the Doc last time I broke some ribs (DH mtbing) was a gigantic script for vic. I wrapped up and raced the next weekend. However it took until the following spring to where I could even ride mellow trails without being completely anihillated on painkillers. I would not recommend wrapping, massive doses of pain meds or potentially dangerous activity.

And as jethro said - broken ribs can fuck shit up. Like your spleen and other organs. Probably doesn't hurt to get an xray.

[old goat]

See a doc. You can definitely be fucked up on the inside and not know it until it's too late. You need an xray to make sure you don't have a collapsed lung or blood in the chest. If there's blood in the chest or a partly collapsed lung and it's not treated the lung will be trapped and not work right and it takes a very big operation to fix. If it's lower down your spleen is under there. Saw someone die from that--boyfriend broke her ribs, didn't come in for 3 days, I took her spleen out but she had already lost too much blood. If it's a couple of ribs and everything underneath is ok you'll just get painkillers--take them. Breathing shallow because it hurts is a good way to get pneumonia. If it's a lot of ribs (probably not given how you were hurt) they will sometimes inject the nerves under the ribs, or put a tube into your spine and give pain medicine through that --epidural catheter like they use for delivering babies. I doubt you're hurt bad enough to need that. 6 weeks to heal. Good thing they don't drug test mountain bike racers, eh.

[rokmnky]

Sucks nuts, I was just logging on for the same injury. I bounced of a jump on my bike and ribs came down on my saddle. I went to Stevens bike park 2 days later and had a few more wrecks. Its a week later now and they're worse than before. My girlfriend is a nurse luckily and Im an EMT in training so pretty sure there's nothing majorly wrong but I wont be racing cyclocross for a few weeks. Really pissed about that since I just built a new bike.

Ive been icing it at night but does anyone know anything to help it heal faster?

[old goat]

nothing will help it heal faster, other than not recrunching while it's healing.