3M Scotchcast cast applied…but so tight…
well…i secured the 4 rolls of scotchcast tape…two from a place in nearby pereria and two sent to me out of bogota. yesterday… i met my doctor at the emergency room of a VERY active hospital located a block from his office to remove my 2nd plaster cast in as many weeks. however…i felt that i had the magic solution to a tough cast..being able to walk on it immediately among other advantages.
cut off the old fine…when he started to wrap the first of the scotchcast rolls around my ankle i noticed that he didn’t dip the roll into water prior to doing the wrap as the simple stupid directions showed on the side of the plastic bag. he told me that they didn’t need it…well…sure enough within 10 minutes or less the cast material had formed like a rock around my leg/ankle/foot area. i must say that it felt tight…just as the plaster casts had felt tight initially and seemed to loosen a little once they dried… so..i was expecting a similar experience with the fiberglass ones. well…i had lunch..later went home…it was about 3 hours after my new cast when i realized this son of a gun was tooooooo tight…there was NO way that i could have slept with this thing strangling my foot. i’ve experienced “cast claustrophobia” in the past and this looked like i mentally might not be able to handle this thing. i’m glad that i came to this realization relatively early in the day…about 2pm or so…we headed to the doctor’s office and just planned to camp out there until he could see what could be done. i felt so bad about going back to this nice guy…AGAIN…with cast problems…but i didn’t have any choice. as it turned out he was there and we saw him within 10 minutes or so. the only alternative that i could think of…and i had read this in another achilles’ tendon blog…was that a doctor cut the cast down both sides…then wrapped the cast with a couple of roles of elastic bandages..after examining me…i asked him if that double cut/elastic bandage deal might be an option. he readily agreed. we met back in the emergency room about an hour later where it made the two cuts and the wrap. oh gosh…i was and am in so much heaven…much more comfortable..still gives my ankle a lot of support but has given my leg that needed extra space..to breathe! the doctor is super….i’m scheduled to have the cast removed in the first week of june. HOWEVER…one question i was thinking…about maybe a reason this fiberglass cast dried so tightly was because he didn’t soak the rolls in water before he used them. maybe that has nothing to do with it…
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I mentioned this split-cast possibility in response to an earlier post of yours, Bill. It’s like a home-made boot — except that orthopedic boots are held closed with NON-elastic Velcro straps, which seems safer and more supportive to me than elastic bandages. (They also have nice padding inside, and sometimes air bladders or other micro-adjustments to make them conform better to your foot.) With elastic bandages, I’d think you’d have to squeeze your foot quite hard to get the kind of reliable support that a normal cast or a boot would provide.
Meanwhile, you’ve got all the other advantages of a boot, including the possibility of doing gentle wiggling and even PT at the appropriate points in your recovery. (Please install the ATR Timeline Widget on this blog so we can all check your schedule easily.) And you can keep your leg clean, and ice it properly, etc., etc. All with great care and caution, of course.
Since you split it front-to-back (cutting down the sides), I think another option you’re going to have is to just wear the back half of it - like a splint - wrapped with the ace bandage. My guess is that you might find that to be a little more comfortable as you get farther along.