The team of surgeons working on the upper leg and hip fractures were very eager to start operating right away, starting as soon as possible in the middle of the night (Monday night/Tuesday morning) as soon as his preliminary tests were completed. It was critical that his hip/femur be put back together as soon as possible as each minute that passed reduced the odds of a successful operation. Devin's upper left leg was broken in the neck of the femur (The "thighbone" which is the area just below the ball that fits into the hip socket in the pelvis), and the lower portion of the fractured femur had detached and shifted up into the pelvic bone.
This is the compression hip screw and plate that was implanted in Devin's left hip. The lower part of the plate that runs snug along the femur is secured by 3 screws (not shown) through the femur.
When the break is in the neck of the thighbone, the fragmented ends can sometimes be realigned and fastened together with internal fixation (i.e. Titanium rodes, plates and screws), however a fracture across the femoral neck can interrupt the blood supply to the head of the femur and this will eventually cause "Avascular necrosis" which is a disease that results from a temporary (or permanent) loss of the blood supply to the bones. Without blood, the bone tissue dies and causes the bone to collapse. When this happens to the bones near a joint, it often leads to collapse of the joint surface and for this reason some doctors believe a total hip replacement is a better choice than trying to reconnect the bone.
This is the type of hardware used to hold the bone together.
Unfortunately, due to internal injuries to his spleen, kidney and liver, Devin was not cleared by the head surgeon for any operations as the risk of death was high enough that the risk of loosing his hip joint became irrelevant.
By 8am Tuesday morning Devin was cleared for surgery and he spent the next 7+ hours getting his hip joint reconstructed. It is not clear weather or not the break to the femur will heal at this point, nor is it clear if he will suffer from "Avascular necrosis". Even if everything goes well, and even if this were his only (or even most serious) injury, the recovery time is significant for this type of injury, in one account a person wrote the following three years after they broke their leg:
I continue to make slow progress... My recuperation is decidedly different that I expected in one specific respect. I expected my hip pain and discomfort to decrease slowly but consistently until my hip felt more or less "normal." I now realize that the recovery is a lot less about feeling and a lot more about function. Even though my hip hasn't been feeling much better lately, I am hopeful that functionally it is getting more and more capable of sustained exercise.
(From "Coming Back from a Broken Hip": http://barrygee.blogspot.com).
Given the extent of Devin's injuries it is very unlikely that he will ever walk again, even if he doesn't have permanent nerve damage from his "shattered" vertebrae.
Things really look grim at this point, and our spirits were low. Nothing short of a miracle would be enough, but would even that be enough?
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