Bionic mom

I would appreciate any thoughts or feedback, especially from anyone who has had a similar experience. I was involved in a near fatal automobile accident on 12/31/02. As a result, I required surgery to repair two badly broken legs and L forearm. During my recovery, my L femur was the most painful of my broken bones. However, since it healed, it has been the injury that never caused any further issues/pain. Well, that is up until about 6 months ago when my femur started aching. Over the past few months, it has progressed to aching pretty much constantly. This is puzzling since my other injuries, which used to be the source of pain/discomfort on a pretty regular basis, have improved incredibly since my family moved to a desert climate a few years ago. Why then should my least severly broken bone (my L femur was a clean break, whereas my R ankle was crushed- required bone grafts, and the bones in my L forearm where shattered- literally in pieces) be bothering me all of a sudden when the others that used to have been helped by the dry climate? I saw an orthopedic last week and x-rays showed that the hardware in my femur is all perfectly in place. So, now I will be going sometime over the next 2 weeks to have a bone scan done on my femur. I am wondering what I should do if the bone scan shows nothing? I have been told that removing the rod from my femur is an option, and although rare, I know that the hardware can sometimes irritate people. Any posts that I find about people who had the rod removed from their femur are from individuals whose rod had been in place for a much shorter time (I'm coming up on 9 years with mine in). I am not excited about the prospect of surgery- I know it won't be easy, particularly since from what I've read, bone bonds pretty well to titanium. However, if removing the rod would take away the pain I'm currently experiencing (after recovering from the surgery, of course) then it would be well worth it! I'm a mom of two young children- 1 1/2 & 5 and I cannot imagine living with this pain every day from here on out. I would appreciate any thoughts, feedback, etc. Thank you in advance :-)