My bf broke his leg probably about 4 years ago playing ultimate frisbee - it was a tib fib fracture, they casted him within the first 24 hours. His leg swelled inside the cast, causing some deep pressure ulcers in what previously was a closed fracture. They then had to install a rod to fix the leg, because of the pressure ulcers. One of the pressure ulcers basically necroticized till there was exposed bone in his shin... Either from that exposed bone or from the installation of his rod, he ended up with an infection in his bone. They basically every 2 or 3 days for a couple weeks opened up his bone and pressure washed the inside of his bone. They ended up cutting off the ends of the fracture to try to remove the infection. You can't do a skin graft to cover up exposed bone, so they had to cut half of one of his calf muscles and use it as a flap to cover the bone and do a skin graft over that. He couldn't lower his leg for a month while the flap/skin graft took. He spent about 3 months with external fixators holding the ends of his bones apart while they tried different 6 week courses of antibiotics (the first didn't take, so they had to do a 2nd one). Finally, they removed the external fixators, put in a metal plate and casted the leg. The bones still didn't heal because all of the pressure washing had killed off the ends of the bone - so they did a bone graft using cadaver bone and taking marrow from his hip. They left the plate in for about 2 years waiting for his bone to heal and finally when it was about 70% healed, they operated to remove the plate and told him to go full weight bearing on the leg to encourage it to heal. So basically, it took about 2.5 years to get to the point where his bone was healed, and he's still got messed up muscles/tendons.

But he was able to ride his bike again about a year after the fracture (even though the fracture was nowhere near healed at that point). We took up kayaking when he was in a cast and non-weight bearing. Then we moved onto biking when his leg was up to it. We backpacked and snowboarding after they took out the plate. He's started running in the last 6 months or so, and went out to play ultimate frisbee again.

When they first did the muscle flap and after cutting the ligaments under his knee cap multiple times, they pretty much told him that he was going to have trouble bending his knee and would have issues walking up stairs for the rest of his life. Range of motion in his knee is fine, and stairs are more than fine. His doctors during all the surgeries were bemused when he told them that he would be climbing again and running marathons, but encouraged him to show them that.