I snapped my femur rock climbing, now what?
The femur is the longest and strongest bone in your body — and on March 5th, 2023, I broke it.
I made a whole video about it here:
But if you are more of a reader, let’s talk about it.
(Here is a link to help me cover hospital and recovery expenses: https://bit.ly/40W6seu)
I never expected to be one of the climbers leaving a gym in an ambulance and there I was… in shock, denial, and immense pain.
Many of my “Ellie in Space” subscribers asked what happened and I wanted to give a thorough explanation.
I also sought out some insight from others who have gone through a similar journey.
Fair warning, some of the content in this video may be graphic or disturbing.
To give you some context, Sunday, March 5th. when I broke my femur, I had only been in my new home of Austin, Texas for about three weeks.
Things were looking up! I’d finally moved to my dream spot.
There are endless activities in Austin and so much for me to cover as a roving reporter.
Cybertrucks will be delivered soon, Starship is set to fly, and I was in the right place at the right time finally, until I wasn’t.
Holding onto an orange rock climbing route in an indoor bouldering gym,I grabbed up for the next hold, twisted my knee and my femur snapped.
Have you ever heard the sound of a bone snap?
It is unmistakable and unforgettable. And in my case, it happened way easier than I ever thought would be possible.
Especially since I was bouldering inside, where you are surrounded by pads, and there’s no need for a helmet or harness.
Keep in mind, my femur didn’t break from the fall.
It broke from the twist on the wall, so while I broke it in the gym, it isn’t really related to climbing.
The day started normal enough, minus the nagging and persistent pain I’d been experiencing in my leg for two weeks.
I was hanging out with my friend, Ryan Tanaka, who runs his own YouTube channel focused on Neuralink.
We decided to go climbing. While I knew I couldn’t run on my knee in its current state, I had climbed just the day before for hours outdoors.
In my mind, it seemed fine to climb.
Fast forward, we arrived at the gym and within ten minutes of being there, I was suddenly in the worst pain in my life.
“You got on the wall just like your first route, doing your thing, just kind of showing me how a more advanced climber would climb a route.”
I had done one warm up route and started a second route in the gym.
“After a couple holds in, I watched you fall to the ground slowly. I didn’t think it was a big deal because it was only like four feet up in the air onto a 1 foot padded mat,” said Ryan Tanaka.
But I knew as soon as I heard that snap that I had broken something.
I thought it was my knee… that’s where the most prominent pain had been for the past few weeks.
“As time went on I started realizing, you are in more pain than I thought you would have been, because I knew for the week prior you had a compromised knee, even earlier you were pointing to your knee and said you felt pain crawling up toward your thigh,” said Ryan Tanaka.
Femur injuries can be deadly. For some, the femoral artery is severed, leading to unconsciousness and then bleeding out. I am amazed I didn’t pass out from the pain.
Ryan said he witnessed me in a hyper aware state.
“You were kind of frozen but you knew what was going on. It’s just crazy to me now afterwards seeing how curved it was and how short it was,” said Ryan Tanaka.
I don’t have video of the accident, which is unique considering I’ve had a lot of my accidents on camera. This included getting kicked in the head by a horse and needing 9 staples years ago.
While I lack video of this, and yes, I called and asked if they had cameras in that spot of the gym, I can illustrate for you the motion of my left knee.
The culprit of my fracture, my beloved drop knee maneuver.
Basically, I bent my knee inward, and that’s when I heard the pop.
It was just enough torque for the hairline fracture to graduate to a full fracture requiring surgery.
I’ve been using this type of move for years, and I firmly believe because my knee was already hurting, likely a hairline fracture that I tried to push through, that twisting was just enough to break the bone, the longest and strongest in the body.
A side note about more old injuries…this leg has gone through a lot.
I tore several ligaments in my left ankle years ago.
I also was stepped on by a horse when I was 12, leading to a horseshoe-shaped scar and scar tissue already in the area.
Speaking of that operation, what I had done is called an intramedullary nailing surgery
I had a displaced spiral fracture.
So how do they fix this?
My doctor went up from my knee area and inserted a titanium rod with screws.
Femur fractures almost always require surgery.
The most common way to stabilize or “fix” your broken femur is to place a metal rod, called an “intramedullary nail” (“im nail” for short) inside the hollow center tube of your femur.
Typically, one or more screws will be placed through holes in the rod above and below the fracture.
Because the rod and screws are placed using x-ray guidance, doctors can usually perform the surgery through several small incisions (cuts) in your skin.
The rod and screws will stabilize your broken femur, and often you will be allowed to put weight on your injured leg right after surgery.
This accident has not only forced me to surrender to things i’m afraid of, like going under general anesthesia, but it’s also led me to connect to strangers.
One of my first nights home, I wanted to read recovery stories from athletes.
Not just WebMD articles and potential recovery timelines.
I found an old ESPN interview with Chad Kagy, an x games athlete who in 2011, during Big Air Finals at X Games 17, ended his season with a broken femur.
So of course the reporter in me wanted to hear his story.
Kagy is probably the most bionic man I’ve ever met, down to 29 pieces of metal throughout his body.
And he’s sort of an expert in getting injured.
“Recovering from injuries, when you can do the little things, you’re like, I went for a walk! and you’re like I will never take walking for granted again,” said Kagy.
His injury was made worse in the hospital.
“I had a doctor screw up, he lifted my leg thinking it was my tib fib, and he pivoted my femur when it was broke and then i went into shock and it went the other way, it took me two weeks until I could bend my knee enough to sit in a chair and so i couldn’t fly home,” said Kagy.
Unlike my experience of a routine warm up turning into a major bone break, Chad knew he was about to be hurt, as soon as he left the ramp for the trick.
“I knew the second I left the ramp that I was crashing. The way that I practice is I learn how to do the trick and then i practice how to crash in the beginning, middle and end in case something goes wrong… it made sense to me that a belly flop would be the best idea because it would spread the impact out, the second it hit I could hear it pop, that particular injury didn’t hurt until the doctor folded my leg in half,” said Kagy.
While my break was a mid shaft spiral femoral fracture, Chad’s fracture was straight across, creating flat bone.
“But having a perfectly flat bone, when it tilted both directions, that sharp bone cut the side of my quad, later turned into two sections of quad, then we did dry needling, turned that scar tissue into swiss cheese, didn’t hurt until he folded my leg in half, and I had some choice words and he ran away, and this whole time I’ve got Travis Pastrana in the room next to me, making fun of me, those are our ER stories… most painful? I shattered my heels and that was most painful, there’s a lot of nerves in the foot,’ said Kagy.
Leading up to my break, I was doing an ab workout challenge with a group of women on facebook around the country.
I broke my femur around the same time we were supposed to turn in our ‘after’ photos.
I posted pictures of my x-ray as my ‘after’ photo…discouraged by the massive setback.
A Nebraska woman in the group named Mollie commented and said she had broken her femur years ago.
I asked her for advice and if she would be willing to share some of her experience with us.
“It helped me to know that you have had an injury like me, you are five years removed from it, how has that recovery process been?,” said Eliana.
“The first year was horrendous…that’s why. reached out to you because when I was in that accident I ended up not in a great headspace, if I had someone to relate to, I definitely think it would have helped me. After that first year when you can walk by yourself again, and you don’t need help, then you start getting confident and you start getting better,” said Mollie.
Mollie had a much longer recovery than I expect to have.
“I was on my way to a weights class with my 75 year old mother in law. somebody went into my lane to pass a semi and hit me head on, we were both going 65, he didn’t see me I didn’t see him, I just remember spinning. I shattered my femur and my pelvis and little bones,’ said Mollie.
While my fracture was a clean break, Mollie’s femur shattered, which requires more intensive recovery.
“They put the rod in and then all the little bone fragments, they kind of get them together and as your bones heal, those fragments will heal together,” said Mollie.
Mollie says she’s blown away by how fast I am up and moving. It’s really been an adjustment, but getting my mobility and independence back little by little has made me cry more than once.
Mollie remembers how hard those first few months were.
“Even just simple things like getting up to go to the bathroom, its like I have to have assistance, the little things that are stripped from you, it’s a lot,” said Mollie.
Mollie and I have a shared love of being in the gym so it really helped me to hear how her leg is now, five years later. I asked if she notices it at all?
“I have a bump that comes out of my leg which is visible, really if you work on your flexibility and mobility, your flex won’t be where it is before, but you are young enough, you will recover well, so ask me again in 20 years, i don’t know,’ said Mollie.
For many people with metal implants, changes in atmospheric pressure aka the weather can cause discomfort in the bone where the hardware has been applied or inserted.
Most people claim to feel it in the cold, but Mollie says she especially notices it when it’s hot.
“If it’s really really hot outside, it doesn’t hurt but it swells a little bit, I am aware of it,” said Mollie.
Implants used to be made of gold, silver, lead and aluminum. I have a titanium rod, which is superior in the sense that it does not corrode in the human body and is easily accepted by the body
While I am still waiting to real test this new bionic lifestyle out, Mollie says I should do what I can to try and prevent my left leg from becoming a stick.
Unfortunately for her, she was immobile much longer than I was due to the extent of her injuries.
“My leg was huge, swollen and then almost overnight my leg was like a stick… I had lost so much muscle mass,” said Mollie.
The doctor told me I should bear partial weight on the injured leg. But since getting out of the hospital, I have been adamant about not sitting around.
For several reasons… I didn’t want to get a clot, I wanted to prevent atrophy as much as possible, and I wanted to stimulate blood flow to keep the rest of my body healthy.
Muscle atrophy can begin after only a few days of disuse, and the extent of atrophy depends on the duration of disuse. At the cellular level, pathologic changes include the shrinkage of muscle fibers, the loss of nuclei from multinucleated muscle cells, and apoptosis.
Thankfully I think I can confidently say I am out of the woods when it comes to clotting risk after surgery.
For three weeks after surgery, the doctor had me inject myself twice daily with blood thinner shots to reduce the risk of clotting. This was one of the worst parts of the recovery which I can happily say I am done with.
Even Chad, who has broken more bones than I can count, understands the pain associated with taking these life saving shots.
“I don’t envy you, you just gave me flashbacks… twice a day, I had to do it for three months. I hated that moment every day,” said Kagy.
Chad has retired from his BMX career but he still rode for many years after his femur accident and suffered even worse pain shattering his heels. I asked him why he keeps riding.
“Stubborn and I love what I do, no offense but I don’t really like real jobs. I like what I do… I’ve been riding a bike since I was 4 years old. I like pushing the boundaries, and inventing new things. I was the first person to do this trick, I got creative…once you make it to a certain level, all of a sudden you are traveling around the world and sharing your gift. You show up and people are excited you are there, I’ve done a half pipe demo at St. Judes, I’ve been to military bases 13 times, we built ramps and backflipped, it was fun to give back,” said Kagy.
People have asked if I will climb again and while it’s hard to think about now, I really do love it so much, and will likely try again, but may explore other sports as well.
“We risk death doing those things but it’s those moments that make you feel alive… What do you think is gonna happen when you go to outer space you’re risking your life? How am I going to get back and rock climb, you are gonna do it with more knowledge, if you are already in that that’s why your femur broke, in the future when you are healthy rock climb all you want,” said Kagy.
Oh, I’ll also have a cool scar story, which I am actually excited about.
“I did have a guy one time come up to me in the grocery store and he goes, you broke your femur didn’t you? and he said he knew someone with that exact same scar, it’s such a distinct scar, when you see it you will know that person broke their femur,” said Mollie.
So how do Mollie and Chad look at their injuries today?
“I always say it was my wake up call, because after I strengthened my relationship with my family with God, I had been given a second chance, I was into fitness before, but you don’t take things for granted more but it pushed me to take care of myself more, i see it completely as a blessing in disguise,” said Mollie.
“I dont notice it a majority of the time because the things that bother my leg are the scar tissue, after a while it would feel like the rod is trying to pop out after running, since shattering my heels running is the biggest nightmare ever, my body is jacked up,” said Chad Kagy.
As I continue to process my thoughts surrounding breaking my femur, it’s amazing how many hurdles I’ve cleared in the four weeks since breaking my femur. Mentally and physically.
Having to jump through the scary hoop of surgery, trying to heal, and adapting to this much slower pace of life.
it’s not about the setback it’s about the comeback and i know this is going to make me stronger physically and mentally
Thank you for watching this video. I hope this helps you or someone in your life.
I also want to give a big thank you to those who have supported me during this incredibly difficult ordeal.