d'huit wrote:

Possible, but I've never heard of any healing activity interrupted by
metabolic cycles.

***it was only meant as a joke.  that's why i said, "playing with" and
"just for laughs" and put a winking smiley at the end.  i was being a bit
silly, kinda saying my guess was a good as the medicos.<smile>

The problem with doing a bone graft / transplant (I've
had a few) is that mining your body for the material to do the graft is
darn traumatic. My first was such that the mining operation took more
healing than the arm which was helped by the grafting procedure.

***yes.  you are correct.  i've had bone grafting done to my left femur,
when that was a non-union for so long.  my ortho hoped the donor material
from my hip would help knit the rest of the femur "oatmeal" together.
however, the bone grafting didn't take, in my case.  the effort wasn't worth
the discomfort and my hip didn't regrow the "scrapings" either.  this is
partly the reason i dismissed the proposal of surgery for this specific
non-union.

that was not my only reason however, because there is another reason i
didn't mention.  the ortho-surgeon i had in the '70s instructed me to warn
any orthopaedic surgeon wanting to do *any* bone surgery on me, but
especially on that leg.  surgery to that particular leg has a heightened
risk of infection, because the original life threatening infection now lies
dormant behind that same leg's knee (one reason i don't dare have a tkr for
that knee, though i need one).   that same infection is NOT an experience i
want to relive -- sky high fever (i'm talking the kind of fever that does
brain damage, 107 degrees and i was just lucky to avoid brain damage --  
though some of my friends might suggest otherwise.<smile>).  there were two
subsequent major surgeries to clean out the infection, multiple and
simulaneous antibiotics (which were, both, injected every few hours and
given by i.v. drip through inter-vascular tubes that lined my veins.  have
forgotten what those were called and can only describe them), i.v.
anti-biotics so potent that they painfully ruptured/infiltrated the veins in
my arms and chest below those internal tubes after only the second dose (and
had to be restarted in many other vein sites, every two doses; and when
those infiltrated and doctors ran out of non-infiltrated veins, cut-downs in
my ankle and groin had to be done), tubes and noisy pumps removing infected
tissue and fluids from the site.  complete isolation was imposed and that
wound up making my room look like a medical warehouse and bio-hazard dumping
ground, as nothing could leave my room (and all of my personal effects had
to be disposed of, along with the medical litter at the end of it all, when
they moved me to another room.) and visitors could not enter.  and the smell
that would gag maggots.  i'd rather live with a non-union than go through
that again.  unfortunately, for me, the raging fever didn't prevent me from
remaining lucid throughout that experience.  so, i remember those weeks
vividly.  this dormant infection still makes me ocassionally feel like a
walking potential bio-hazard.

OTHO, you gotta do something....\

***or perhaps doing nothing is the best way to go and i think i prefer
that.<smile>

kate