Broken rib pro here, unfortunately. The first time was 5 broken ribs, teeny collapsed portion of one lung after a chestnut mare was feeling fresh and I giggled at her fresh bucks and then she launched me into the frozen ground. I walked on a treadmill on an incline for several miles a day to stay active, was back to work at a desk job in a week, back on the horses in a month - could’ve been sooner but it was January and bad weather. Healed great.
Second time was 6 months later after I came off and got stepped on after an out of control horse crashed into us in the warm up ring at a show. That one required surgery and plates to reconstruct my chest, resect and staple a lung back together; there were 6 broken ribs in a bunch of places with a flail chest segment, my liver was lacerated 75% of the way through and I spent 12 days in the hospital because the lung kept springing leaks and re-collapsing. I was back on in a month but tacking up and down was bad - being on was fine but I lacked any core since my intercostal muscles were like ground burger for a while. At 7 weeks I went to a show and did one in the 5 yo and one in the 1.30 - that was dumb as I certainly didn’t give the heavy/strong 1.30 horse a good ride without any real core. Fwiw, the surgeon told me “you can ride, just don’t fall off.”
Lessons learned are to sleep in a recliner for the first two weeks or so, do the extra strength tylenol/ibuprophen cocktail religiously and before you think you need it (mine was every 4 hours around the clock), get a prescription for robaxin/muscle relaxers if you want to be active as you heal, drink lots of water, press right under your tear ducts if you feel a sneeze coming on and hug a pillow against your broken side if you do have to cough.
My friends chipped in after the second incident and bought me a horse pilot air vest and I’ve come off several times since then - I do worry about landing on the side of my ribs that are covered in plates. The vest has always deployed successfully and I feel it really helped prevent pain and reinjury of that side.
