Upper arm fracture

A bone does not simply break. It breaks when a force acts on it that exceeds its load capacity — from the outside, through a fall or impact, or from within, through a load that has built up over a long time. In an upper arm fracture, both come together. The fall is the event. But the fracture is the story.

Your upper arm is the area of your body with which you act in the world. With which you seize, hold, embrace, heave, push away, cling, carry. The large muscles encasing your upper arm are the muscles of doing — of active, shaping force. When a bone breaks here, this entire apparatus is brought to a standstill from one second to the next. You can no longer seize. No longer hold. No longer carry.