Ice buckets and ice packs
So it seems as though my right leg woes are not quite behind me as I had hoped. On top of some other issues that the surgeon is investigating, I managed to put a small partial tear into the Achilles a few weeks ago and it has flared it all back up again. Anyway, this all brings me to my tip, for those of us who live in the Southern Hemisphere and are enjoying the warmth of the on-coming summer, you may also be like me and experience a bit more swelling. I have found that filling up a large bucket of water and dumping ice in is a great way of cooling the leg down. My physio recommends no longer than 10 minutes of this at any one time, but I would check with your PT on the tinmeframes suitable for you. The other tip I have is that I pack a small chilly bag in the car along with ice packs to take with me whenever we go out for any period of time.
December 6th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
When my PT and I talked ice, I said I’d heard about 5minutes on, 5off. He said “Sure, if you want to chill your SKIN!” He thought that 20 minutes was good for post-ATR swelling. At home, I carried around a chamois cloth and a wide-mouthed thermos with a bread bag inside containing ~1/2 a tray of ice cubes. For icing, I’d open the thermos, pull out the bag partway, grab a cube, hold it in the cloth, and rub it over the swelling ’til it was gone. Sometimes a second. Some people freeze water in styrofoam cups then peel away the foam like an ice-cream cone, but that won’t store in a thermos…