I would appreciate any thoughts or feedback. I was involved in a near fatal automobile accident on 12/31/02. As a result, I required nearly 10 hours of surgery to repair two badly broken legs and L forearm. During my recovery, my L femur was the most painful of my broken bones. However, since it healed, it has been the injury that has never caused any further issues/pain. Well, that is up until about 6 months ago when my femur started aching. Over the past few months, it has progressed to aching pretty much constantly. This is puzzling since my other injuries, which used to be the source of pain/discomfort on a pretty regular basis, have improved incredibly since my family moved to a desert climate a few years ago. My L femur was the least severely broken bone as it was a "clean" break, whereas my R ankle was crushed (the joint required bone grafts), and the bones in my L forearm were shattered (literally in pieces). So why should my femur be bothering me all of a sudden, when the other two limbs that were more seriously injured and used to hurt all the time, are now doing incredibly well due to the dry climate where I now live? I saw an orthopedic last week and x-rays showed that the hardware in my femur is all perfectly in place. So, now I will be going next week to have a bone scan done on my femur. I am wondering what I should do if the bone scan shows nothing? I'm assuming that the scan is not going to find some horrific problem like bone cancer and since my hardware is fine, I feel that chances are that the scan won't shed any light on the source of my pain. I have been told that removing the rod from my femur is an option, and although rare, I know that the hardware can sometimes bother people. Any posts that I have found from people who've actually gone ahead and had the rod removed from their femur are from individuals whose rod had been in place for a much shorter time (I'm coming up on 9 years with mine in). Don't get me wrong, I am not excited about the prospect of surgery- I know it won't be easy, particularly since from what I've read, bone bonds pretty well to titanium. However, if removing the rod would take away the pain I'm currently experiencing (after recovering from the removal surgery, of course) then it would be well worth it! I'm a mom of two young children- ages 1 1/2 & 5 who I want to be able to be active with and I cannot imagine living with this current level of pain every day from here on out. I would appreciate any thoughts, feedback, etc. Thank you in advance :-)