Lily

OK, in my story, one of my characters goes through a crash and survives, but with both legs broken. I was wondering how long it takes for broken legs to heal, and how soon people can walk afterwards, or if they can. And if they can, will they always have a limp, or does that depend on the kind of break they have? Thanks in advance for any info! I'd really appreciate any

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Insufferable Know-it-all.

Pendulum

It depends where they are broken. If it's the shin it's not as bad as the upper leg but it can take six weeks+ to heal.

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Society Blows

Nifty1Pound50

Yeah, six weeks is probably a minimum recovery time for an actual heal.

After six weeks, it is more than likely that there would still be evidence of the break - be that a limp, a light cast, or whatever.

Most people recover from broken legs fully and are able to play sports again and the such-like, however sometimes they lose that slight bit of speed/acceleration. Limps will not usually be evident.

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Vixen

Regardlessly of the severity of the break, the majority of people learn to walk again without a limp. However, correcting a limp can take time. I have known people who manage to only limp when tired, or distracted, despite injuries that would leave most individuals hobbling.

One man I know broke his leg some 15 years back. The break was severe, but it was not a compound fracture. The metal that now holds those bones together sets of airport metal detectors. He only shows signs that the leg was ever broken after strenous periods of high speed running. His walk never really changed.
Once, many years closer to the acident, he was even recognized, by a man who knew his father, as having a recognizable gate. The subtlties that much exist fro a son to be recognized by having his fathers walk astound me. This walk was unchanged by the accident. Most of the time, even those of us who have heard many graphic tellings of what happened forget he was ever injured so severely.

The period of walking within 2-3 weeks after the romoval of the casts may be unusual. A few years ago, I had a tendon lengthening surgery on my legs. After around 6 or 8 weeks in casts, plus the change in the structure of my tendon, I had difficulty learning to walk naturally. For the first hour I used a walker, and then cruthches for at least a week. Around 3 days after getting of the cruthces, I was actually approached in the supermarket by amemeber of the oginization that had helped fund my surgery. He wanted to know if I needed a surgery to correct the problems in my walk. When I told him his organization had already "helped" me, he looked very, very concerned. Of course, I can't say how much I compare to your character, it depends how severely he broke his legs.

One thing I learned, people are more respectfull when you have crutches Casts. Flying home with casts, I got wonderfull treatment, delivered whealchiar, help in line, lots of friendly, get wells. Without the casts (but when I was still unable to walk without crutches) we had an airplane tram car taken from us by an elderly couple who felt, "they needed it more."

One the plane, the man behind us actaully made fun of me as a "lazy cripple" He was able to reach down and jar the crutches into my legs during the flight, and even tried to take one of the crutches from me as we got of the plane. I think he must have been drunk. I hope he was really drunk.

But o.k., enough rambling about my experainces...

Hope that helps,

p.s. Is he your main character? If so, what is the good reason for injuring him so severely? It seems as though such action might slow down the plot, I'm just curious how you plan to handle it...