Unfiltered: AFL fan favourite Jeremy Howe shares moment he thought his career was over
Howe suffered the gruesome injury in the opening-round clash against Geelong, but it was the complications and infections after the surgery that almost forced him to walk away from the game.
Unfiltered with Hamish McLachlan, featuring Jeremy Howe, 9.30pm straight after The Front Bar on Seven and 7plus.
The much-loved player detailed his immediate thoughts of the sickening injury to the low points of the recovery in a powerful episode of Unfiltered.
'The moment where I go upside down, I heard the snap before I hit a deck,' he tells Hamish McLachlan.
'And then once I got to the ground, I'm literally was laying there. Feels pretty painful ... Bruzzy (Brayden Maynard) comes over to pick me up, and then he's like 'oh f***' and I looked down my forearms facing the bench, but by the rest of my forearms up against my rib cage.'
'So it's snapped in four different places, and then my elbow tried to dislocate, chipped two bones in my elbow and snapped my AC joint at the same time.
'And they gave me a green whistle, and it did nothing. I had to wait for the ambos to get there before I could get pain relief.
'My dad was at the game. He came down. I was pretty much in tears, and I was shaking on the bed. I couldn't stop shaking, and I was like, whether I was in shock or they were trying to hold my arm but my legs are trembling.
'The chest is just shuddering, felt like I'm having pain attack. The pain was so significant, I've never felt like anything like it, it was like a blow torch to my arm.'
But while the pain of the initial injury was unbearable, things got a lot worse for Howe.
An infection to the arm forced him to take antibiotics and painkillers, which took its toll.
There was a moment when he couldn't even pick up his one-year-old son Zander, which made Howe question his AFL career.
Unfiltered with Hamish McLachlan, featuring Jeremy Howe, 9.30pm straight after The Front Bar on Seven and 7plus.
'It was the pills and the painkillers that got me the most,' he continued.
'But taken so many antibiotics, painkillers, all at the same time for like, a large period of time, like 11 days in a row.
'I was in such a haze where I just had no emotion. I didn't know what I was doing.
'Kahlia would bring Xander in. I couldn't pick him up. I wasn't allowed to touch him. I was like, what's going on?
'I questioned everything ... was this really worth it? Is this what I want to be at 32? I'm not even capable of picking my son up.
'And I've said it before, if I can't be a husband and I can't be a dad then footy just gets parked. That's generally when I thought I was gonna scrap it.'
Howe went on to say that surgeon Julian Feller came to see him every single day, which is something he'll 'never ever forget'.
For the time in his career, he needed time to decide his future and coach Craig McRae was fully supportive.
He went back home with his wife Kahlia and young son, and lasted just nine days before he returned to the club.
Howe immediately ticked off a lot of milestones in his recovery, but admitted that he still doesn't have feeling his thumb — two years after the injury.
But there was an episode during his recovery that almost forced him to retire on the spot.
'I had an episode where I was taking so many antibiotics, and the strength of what they were, my gut started eroding from the inside, and I ended up having to go back into hospital, getting more pills to try and fight what the other antibiotics were doing,' he said.
'I was like, is this really worth doing this? Because I don't want to be 40, and all of a sudden my intestines in my stomach is gone. It's cooked.
'But I managed to get through I managed to weed myself off the antibiotics. It's either stop playing and get the metal (plate) out, or scrap the antibiotics and pray that the infection doesn't come back.
'So we stop the antibiotics and if it comes back, I'll get it metal (plate) out and then that's it, put a line through me, I'm done.
'And it never came back. So I got off the antibiotics and it instantly made me feel better.'
Howe remarkably returned to the field just three months after the horror incident, going on to play in Collingwood's 2023 premiership team.
And the 35-year-old is still going strong as the Pies embark on another tilt at the flag.
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