Pain in sternum after heart surgery

I had double by pass surgery 18 months ago and feel my healing has been uncomplicated up until a month ago. I started back doing my usual outside routine of cleaning horse stables, pressure washing and painting and fear my sternum may be affected in some way. Whenever I move my arms a certain way, I get a quick shooting electrical pain in my sternum and have to stop whatever I'm doing? I thought by now that the sternum had fused and didn't have to worry about any problems concerning this? I wonder if anyone can tell me what might cause that horrid pain to occur and if I may have done something to cause it to be out of wack???

It sounds as if you may have a degree of sternal non-union, a condition where the bone does not heal completely. This could be caused by the use of bone wax, something that is used to control bleeding from the bone, but also keeps it from healing later. There is some new material that I heard of called Ostene. There is more information about this at: http://www.ostene.com/BonewaxCompl.html.

I had the same problem after my surgery. The problem was the wires used to hold the sternum together while they fuse together were hitting a nerve. The surgeon removed the wires and the pains went away.

My husband had open heart surgery to repair a defect he had since he was born. They cracked his chest to preform the surgery. So I am wondering how long does it take for the bones to fuse back together?