I fell years ago and experienced a compression fracture of one vertebra, but no surgery was done. In 2009 I fell again and suffered a tibial plateau fracture, which did require surgery. One of the things the ortho surgeon did was to fill in with "bone paste", plus inserting a metal support plate. I don't know if the "bone paste" is the same thing you are asking about. Best wishes to your friend. It's so nice that you are concerned about her.

I think if she's interested she has to go to a surgeon soon. I've read it can only be done within a certain time.

Nanny--how is your vertabrae fracture now? I have one from two years ago and have been thinking of going to a surgeon. It doesn't seem to be getting better.

@AnnNY
The ortho who handled my vertebra fracture gave me some exercises to do, which I did at the time. But it always felt weak until I started taking the strontium citrate. Now it feels stronger, as long as I keep taking strontium. If I run out of the supplement, within a few days my lower back begins to feel weak again.

Thank you all so much. I will let her know.
Brenda.

Do you all think a fracture will heal? She is in much pain.

I've read both things. Some say it will heal and others that it never heals. I wish I had realized that I had a fracture earlier (I thought I had thrown out my back), so I could have had the bone paste surgery. I think now I will need pins. But I can't say mine is much better after two years. I use the strontium citrate, too, and it does seem to feel a little better with that.

Thank you very much.

I did not know that your bones have trouble healing after a fracture when you have osteoporosis. I broke a bone last week and wonder if I should get an x-ray again after 4 weeks. That is how long they said it would take to heal so I didn't really question that.

It's this particular kind of fracture. This is the way I envisioned it and I can be wrong--when you break a normal bone there is a certain amount of over growth of tht bone.the spine can't do that or it would smash the spinal cord.

Oh thank you-that is a relief-I was worried. That is probably why my endocrinologist was particularly concerned about disk compression fractures and I thought he was just trying to scare me into surgery.

My son in law had stress fractures in his spine. They were very painful and very hard to find. He had the two largest cemented. That was over a year ago and he says the pain has lessened quite a bit. The
Dr said they have mended the bone.

It took quite a while to find the fractures they could not be seen on
X-ray.

Best of luck

I just made an impulse purchase of a homeopathic remedy that said it was good for healing bone trauma and it had a picture of a broken bone on it. ;-) I'm not a big believer in homeopathy but it was one of those things that seemed to make sense in the moment and it just happened to catch my eye for some reason while walking by. I guess it can't hurt and if anyone is interested I can go look at what exactly it is but for me I am doing better than last week without anything so it would be hard to say if it helped anything or not.

@cc22
Yes, I would be interested in knowing the name of your homeopathic product.

nanny
It is symphytum officinate 12 c
Boiron is the manufacturer. Hope it helps someone and hope it helps me heal my broken toe(s?) faster. Not sure why they did not x-ray my whole foot since now it looks like there might be more bones involved but still not much can be done-just hope everything is lined up OK so I can walk normally when I can take the walking boot off.

I have ten vertebrae compression fractures. Last August I had two of them surgically treated with kyphoplasty (a cement-like substance inserted through a tube which they hammer into the vertebrae). I was told at the time it would heal in a week. It has been eight months and I have had little relief. I can walk around my small apartment with a back brace, but anything other than that requires a wheelchair. I have severe osteoporosis caused by taking low dose prednisone for rheumatoid arthritis for a long time. I don't know which is worse, but right now I would say my back pain is worse than my RA. I understand this procedure does work for others, but I have to say if I suffer another fracture, I will not opt for this procedure again. Good luck to you in whatever you decide. Carolean