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So, here's my predicament. I shattered my right humerus (upper arm bone) on Jan 3rd in a skiing accident. I wasn't really 'skiing' at the time as much as 'taxiing back to the bar after a day of skiing', but my luck bucket must have been leaky and my number came up.

It's been just shy of 12 weeks since the injury, and the arm is improving, though admittedly a bit slower that I was hoping. Despite having gone through hell for the past 6 weeks in Africa, including:

-Tripping on the top stair while getting off the plane (rather drunk) in London and doing the splits while tumbling down the entire flight of stairs onto the tarmac, luggage and all
-Crashing a dirt bike in the bush while smuggling congolese refugees between camps
-Flipping ass-over-teakettle on a bicycle because I really had to scratch an itch on my head but had no other good hand to steady the handlebars. Stopping was not an option due to the 30-50 school kids who were in hot pursuit.
-Rope jumping, ziplining, rappelling, quad-biking, running down 1000' scorching hot sand dunes barefoot
-~100 hours of long, bumpy rides in various forms of transport including motorbikes, the back of bean supply trucks and police vehicles, bus rides of widely varying comfort levels, and occasional one-handed bicycle riding
-Carrying way too much luggage around on this entire journey, frequently twisting my arm in and out of the straps of my 50lb backpack

Despite all of this, it still appears to be healing. Currently I'm able to lift my arm all the way forward and sideways and hold it there under its own weight, and can even lift my elbow to eye level when doing a backscratching-type movement.

However, regardless of all of this supposed progress, my arm still bends up to 15-20 degrees at the fracture site, and has been doing this for the past several weeks without getting much 'stiffer'. When I move my arm around, I can feel it bend and shift when the force of gravity and/or muscle pulls it in a different direction.

My predicament: I'm going to Switzerland in mid-May (about 8 weeks from now) and the whole world can burn in hell if I show up there unable to fly a wingsuit. Or pull (it is my right arm, after all).

At the current rate of healing, I'm estimating (based on very little real evidence, just my gut feeling after having read several google books on the subject) that by the time I get there, the bone will no longer be bending, but its strength (and my surrounding muscles' strength) will not be 100%. But I think I'll be jumpable.

The problem that I have is that since wingsuits put a lot of strain on that bone, and my right arm is my pull arm, what happens if I somehow re-break my arm in flight (due to wind forces, a wierd pull attempt, bumping into somebody on a two-way, striking a bird or stray cliff, etc)? So I've got a few options stewing in my mind right now (Part 1 of the poll) related to what I should do to make sure that if my arm becomes useless in mid-flight, I'm not forced to just curse the world as I watch myself burn in with a perfectly good packjob on my back with a pilot chute that I can't pull.

Part 2 of the poll is for anyone who's been in a similar situation and can provide some insight, i.e. what kind of injury you had, the pattern of healing over time, how long it took before you could resume jumping, challenges you encountered when you started jumping again, etc.

I look forward to reading everyone's input

Thanks,
Gimp

Part 2: I've never been in this or a similar situation, so I'm probably going to err on the side of caution and just tell you to be safe and don't jump if its not perfect

I got 9 stitches in my thumb once, and was jumping that week. You should be good to go.

I bust my ACL in my left knee a few years ago. I waited until it was properly healed before I continued BASE. This causes me to miss 2 bigwall trips abroad.

My advice is wait for it to heal and cancel the trip if need be. Stop doing all these high stress activities which delay healing also. I know its crappy situation, but why not simply wait?

Imagine this scenario, your arm feels solid, you decide to go on holiday. You have switched to a left hand deployment but shortly after jumping, your right arm breaks again. You go really unstable and dump causing a PC entanglement with your body.

Think again and do not show such an flagrant desire to kill yourself.

My experience with healing...

In 2002 (had 13 skydives) I was returning
to work after lunch on my motorcycle and
got hit by a kid in a church van which broke
my right femur, patella, clavicle, and opened
a very large hole on the interior of my right
leg requiring a skin graft plus the normal
road rash and knee ligament damage one
would expect from this kind of crash.

I was back skydiving in less than 3 months.

During the healing process I continued to
work out, stretch, do PT, etc. and one day
was feeling a little too froggy, did some
sparring and got punched on my chest
RE-breaking the collar bone - OUCH

You're a young man with a long jumping
career ahead of you... Switzerland will still
be there in a few months. Let your body
heal properly to avoid decades of limited
function and arthritis...

Or go hand held with your left but do not
stress the arm and risk death in a WS

we all know that a person can have no use of their lower body and still have full and complete capability to deploy and control a parachute.

but you went and broke your arm. wait until it heals brother. I'll be there in july/aug and we will hit it then.

Aw shucks, guys! Golly you're just too kind

yeah I know those girls. super hot but watch out for the crotch crickets.

As 3/4 of a doctor, just drink a shit load of milk, and wait 6 more weeks. Re-evaluate at the time, and do a wingsuit jump or two out of some airplanes if youre feeling like your arm will take it. I would not do a wingsuit base jump, or a base jump at all with a right boc if you think theres a chance that the arm will re-break. Not only will it hurt like hell, your radial nerve can get compressed by the break/swelling which will make you basically unable to actually pull even if you could get to the boc. Not worth it if the arms not ready, but ill be in the valley the 17-30th as well. Hope you make it out, but dont push it if you cant.

that just sounds wrong!

I'm not qualified to have a real opinion... but when I think of flexing, I think of a soda can. the flexing weakens the material. bone might be different. my gut feeling is immobilize it until it stays still on it's own.

oh...
and I'm betting if you have these thoughts, you might lack currency when you bet to Europe. be careful!

I chose go for it but that's because I wanted to skew the poll.

Since you already have it in your mind what to do with your flimsy arm, just do that!

If your arm can handle the stress but feels weak to pull, switch over your skydiving rig and give it a whirl. Many whirls in fact and high speed landing approaches formerly known as hook turns.

Does it really flex like that? How cool, and creepy at the same time.

I too shattered my humerus, hooked a borrowed and too small base canopy into a palm tree and fell on the sidewalk below... broke it in 5 pieces, as well as my wrist, shoulder, and one of those forearm bones. I took 6 months off from jumping. In the mean time I moved to costa rica did a shit load of coke, boozing, and banging hookers. I highly recommend my healing regimen to everyone by the way.

luckily, it was my left arm. I spent some serious time in the gym and did a lot of surfing but my shoulder was the worst part. Upon returning I took 3.5sec slider off and nearly dislocated my shoulder on opening. I've never been on anything tall enough for a wingsuit, or slider for that matter, so I can't help you much there. But I definitely recommend coke and hookers. That's for sure.

good luck... did you get one of those "clam-shell" immobillizers for the humerus? hard plastic and velcro thingy that squezes it all together?

Yea, I got one of those clamshell things. Funny thing is, they only come in standard sizes, like small, medium, large. So my extra-long arm needed a 'large', but my extra-skinny arm always seemed a bit too small for the brace. It took quite a while to figure this out, because it would tighten really well around most of the arm, giving the illusion that all was well. However, I started to notice that there was a gap over my bicep, allowing lots of movement (especially after ceasing use of the sling and having my arm constantly hanging wierdly because my elbow wouldnt straighten).

The flexion that I described that occurs at the fracture ONLY occurs in the axis in which my brace seemed to be loosest.

However, I got drunk last week and said 'fuck this', whipped out a swiss army knife and a lighter, and made some ghetto field modifications to it. Since then, the brace has felt sufficiently tight in all axes, but I didn't really try to 'move the bone' around to check the progress until yesterday. It now only moves about 5 degrees, still only in that one axis, and is more difficult to get it to bend. This was really disappointing, because it was a great party trick, and the spectators didn't get as good of a freakshow for their money.

And as pocbase just witnessed moments ago, I can actually raise my arm high enough under its own strength to reach my toggles! I'm still a ways off though.

The possibility of nonunion is definitely there, but I'm only about one week past the 'average time to union' for a mid-shaft humerus fracture (according to a study on fracture braces years ago), and it was mentioned that they can take up to 18 weeks to achieve union. My doctor has been stalking me on facebook and providing occasional input, but he's been wandering around in Patagonia for the past few weeks so I haven't been able to consult him.

Thanks to everyone who's replied to this thread or sent me messages, your input is thoroughly appreciated! I'm still sorting through the mound of information that I have in front of me now

If it was me...I'd wait.
Why is wing suiting in the Valley the be all and end all of your problem ?
Go there..take a tracking suit (or not) and have a blast....no stress about about the strains of the wingsuit on your arms.
Its BASE paradise......and you don't 'need' to wingsuit to boogie...in fact if bigger wall suiting is your party...there surely are better places this side of the Atlantic ...no ?

Either way have a nice trip

Edit: Use what you 'have' rather than use what you want to have.

Unfortunately for that plan, hookers in these parts come with a 50% chance of sharing their friendly neighborhood strain of the hiv. And I don't drink coke anymore. But I was recently introduced to this really interesting white powdery tea from the leaves of the Coca plant that you drink up your nose. It's quite invigorating! It was recommended by the local witch doctor for bone growth. Bones are, after all, nothing but dense collections of white powdery stuff.

hello there brertt! I broke my left arm and left leg on a jump near xenia,300' was jumping as soon as they took the casts off 5 weeks later. was supposed to be 6 but doc thought different. you know if you were here you could practice on a certain LARGE A..... jimmy

'Broke' or 'Shattered'? was it your humerus or radius/ulna? Was this your infamous jump at Bone Crusher?