Lonan

I need a little guidance after a ‘minor’ crash.
Post crash analysis indicated that a severe brain lapse occurred when I was unable to unclip and went down like a sack of potatoes.
That said, and celebrating that the required noob clipless pedal initiation was truly completed, I realized that my ribs suffered some blunt trauma inflicted by other less sensitive portions of my body. Said portion being my elbow jammed into my rib cage.
I made it the last 7 miles home and decided that possibly a trip to the doctor was in order.
After hours of waiting and an in-depth examination was completed, that lasted all of 5 minutes, the Dr. said since there was no distortion, the ribs were probably just cracked slightly or bruised. No need for an X-ray. Please pay on your way out.
I did the ice thing regularly and endured 10 days of no riding until I decided to literally get back in the saddle.
It’s been almost 6 weeks since the injury and was wondering if anyone, having had a similar injury, could shed some light on when the dull, but ever present, pain might decide to go away. Might I be prolonging the healing process by not having taken enough time off and continuing to ride or is it just a case of ‘time will heal’?
Although I realize that most of you are not doctors, although you may play one on TV, I was just trying to get an idea of how long it took to get to the pain free state.
Thanks.

Old School

Curious the physician did not order an xray given the mechanism of injury. In general, fractures take 6-8 weeks to heal. A simple contusion (bruise) should have resolved by now. Take some Alleve and give it a while longer.

P.S. You can pay me on the way out!

Adiankur

Remember that injuries to areas that you use a lot can take longer to completely heal. You could be re-injuring yourself everytime you ride. You likely arent staying at the level of damage but healing somewhat slowly. My hamstring took longer to heal than normal, but got a little better every week because I was still working that muscle, even though it was in a reduced capacity.

4SEVEN3

Ive heard that broke/cracked ribs take longer to heal than most bones.
Any truth to this?

NuBiker

depending on the fracture site and position of the fractured bone. In this case, it should have healed by now, but severe trauma to any ligaments and supportive soft tissue can cause pain up to 6-9 months. Ibuprofen should help, if not seek care to rediagnose.

tenpas

I had cracked ribs about 10 yrs ago, hit the pavement on a motorcycle at about 35mph after blowing a tire on the interstate at 65mph and trying to slow down safely. Breathing was bad enough, moving hurt, but laughing was pure agony....sneezing was an out-of-body experience. Yeah, they take longer to heal because they are always moving. The old idea of 'taping the ribs' does not seem to help or hurt the repair time.

I think it was more like 8 weeks before I was mobile and not in lots of pain, several months to repair fully.

You have my sympathy, expect it to be quite a while before you are totally without pain. Sorry for the bad news.

ericgu

I cracked a rib skiing two seasons in a row - same rib, same date, within an hour or so of time, so I have a bit of experience with this.

There are a few weird things about cracked ribs:

1) They hurt more a week after the injury than they do initially
2) X-rays don't tell you anything, which is why the doctor didn't take one. If it had been worse he could have told by the physical exam.
3) There are two things going on. One is the rib crack. The other is the connective tissue between the ribs (if you've ever eaten beef ribs, you know what it's like). It's very likely you tore that tissue, and that's what is causing the dull pain.

My experience is that it takes about 6 weeks from when the pain is worst until it goes away. You want to avoid anything that is moving the ribs around a lot, but usually the pain keeps you from doing that. I kept riding all through my last one and it didn't seem to make it worse.

Dull pain on this isn't generally an issue. If you get up to 9 weeks and it hasn't gotten better, I'd go back in again.

For me the worst part was always turning over in bed...

Lonan

Thanks all for the quick responses.
This is exactly the info I was seeking.
You can't beat first hand experience.

Eric you hit it right on the head with the rolling over in bed observation. That's the only real time I would say it hurts. The rest of the time it's just dull and I know it's there.
I'll just keep riding and not pushing myself too hard for awhile. I've always worked my way through most pain and injuries and it's encouraging to hear this situation should be no exception (with careful monitoring).

Interesting note: I found that riding while taking Naproxin (Aleve) really kicks my heart rate up quickly.
On the meds I would jump from Zone 1 to 3 almost immediately and stay up in 4/5 on an otherwise moderate ride.
Off the meds a few days and HR was back to normal.

Thanks again.

Blonde Warrior

Lonan:

I had a similar injury; the doctor determined that in addition to the crack I had damaged some of the connective tissue ericgu referred to as well as rib cartilidge.

It took a good two months before I was completely pain free; I altered my activity level to whatever I could tolerate, since doing almost everything hurt. If the activity wasn't going to make it worse, I just worked through the pain.

Good luck and take care of yourself.

slowandsteady

Cracked ribs suck. I broke my ribs about 15 years ago when riding or should I say falling off of a horse. I could not move my arm above my shoulders for a month. The pain was awful. Everything hurt..breathing, sneezing, coughing, sitting up everything. But, after a month, I was sort of back to normal. I could at least move. But it took months before I was 100%.

I would say after 1 month you could resume biking. The pain will be there, but I doubt you will do anything to injury it more....unless you fall over again. Just take some ibuprofen to cope with the pain.

Machka 

Early June, 1997.

Morning: I slammed my foot into the leg of a table causing excruciating agony ... and upon further analysis, a broken toe.

Evening: I decided to go for a ride anyway, because, after all, we wear hard-soled shoes which I figured they would give my foot the needed support, and we don't pedal with our toes anyway.

I was riding with a friend and all was going well, until I began drafting him. He encountered a traffic situation, stopped, and I plowed right into him.

If my foot had been fine, I would have put it on the ground and prevented injury, but my brain sent a command down to my foot telling it to remain on the pedal ... that dropping it to the ground would cause me a great deal of pain. So I not only kept my foot on the pedal, I also kept my hands firmly glued to the handlebars. I went over and landed squarely on my ribs.

And off I went to the clinic. Yes, my toe was broken, and at first the Dr told me I was not in enough pain for my ribs to be cracked ... but then the pain really started up. Because I had a small scrape on my toe, my Dr also decided to give me a tetanus shot. That finished me off completely. My left foot was out of commission, my left ribs were cracked, and my left arm was useless from the shot.

The next day I tried to ride my bicycle, but it was too much for me, and I ended up throwing up from the pain. But the following day I was back on the bicycle again. I found that the position on the bicycle (leaning forward with my ribs hanging in the air) was the most comfortable of all positions, and so I rode a lot in the next few weeks.

It took a good 8-10 weeks though before the pain fully subsided, and before I could lie on my left side again. It's a slow process, and you're only a little over halfway there. But I don't see why you can't ride your bicycle. That should still be possible.