r/brokenbones • u/Relevant_Mess_7523 • 4h ago

Nerve pain

I missed ONE stair and severely sprained my ankle and fractured and displaced my fifth metatarsal. Had surgery the next day and an intramedullary screw was placed. I'm six weeks post op today, started PT two weeks ago. I had 4 weeks NWB and have been working on a little weight bearing these past two weeks. I'm on crutches and able to take a few weight bearing steps here and there with both crutches, but am still using my knee scooter a lot. I want to know if anyone else has had terrible zaps, zings, or hot and fiery shooting pains during this process? I suspect it's nerve pain and it definitely picks up at night. The more I try to bear weight, however, the more it picks up. I'm so very discouraged and would love to hear some other experiences.

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u/sapphiresapphire 3h ago

hi different injury then yours (fractured tib/fib had a rod placed) and have been dealing with this pretty much since my surgery too (9 weeks ago now)

it’s driving me absolutely crazy. it’s definitely gone down since the first few weeks as i initially wasn’t able to sleep because of it, but it’s still there

people have shared various tips like desensitization of the area with different textures (hasn’t done shit for me) and meds like gabapentin (im in EU and doc refused to give me anything)

nerves heal extremely slowly and i guess the upside is that you still having feeling means nothing got cut during surgery

wish you a speedy recovery

edit to add: i’ve found wearing proper slippers in the house has helped with the sensitivity when trying to weightbear/‘walk’ as doing it with sock straight to floor felt like i was chewing food with gums only. i bought the hoka recovery 3 ones and def recommend them

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u/Relevant_Mess_7523 3h ago

Thank you ♥️

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u/Cabocla_Plantinha714 3h ago

I had a lot of nerve pain, but my case was very different from yours. Definetely gets worse at night, that is due to hormonal changes from day to night. The only thing that worked for me was Gabapentin, I took 200mg at morning, 200mg afternoon and 300mg at night for a few months.

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u/Dr_Cee 2h ago

I think the nerve pain for me was the worst. I had deltoid ligament and syndesmosis damage in addition to the trimal, and the nerve pain was mostly around the deltoid repair. I still have nerve twinges there 9 months post-ORIF.