*AND* they come in decorator colors

[o_bunny]

I woke up yesterday morning with my broken foot hurting quite a lot, which it had not been doing.  Considering that I suffer from classic migraine, I believe that "quite a lot" really is quite a lot.  Inspection showed that the cast had broken above the ankle, about 3/4 of the way around, in line with the plaster bandage used to make the thing in the first place. If I relaxed my ankle, the crack opened and my foot hurt; if I tensed muscles so that the crack closed, my foot didn't hurt but my calf muscles ached and cramped.

I made the appropriate phone call, and got told to come in to the emergency room for a look-see. So my sweetie wrapped my cast in an elastic bandage (looked rather surreal), packed some supplies (food, check; drinks, check; paperback books, check) and we head off to the QCH.  Usual triage and wait ensues.

When I finally got to the cast room, the technician (I believe that's the right term) sawed off the old cast, washed my foot and leg, and we had a discussion on the scentedness of the soap being used ("It's unscented." "No it's not, I can smell it from over here," says my sweetie. "We're only supposed to use unscented stuff here." "Look, here in the ingredients list: Fragrance." "Dang. I'll take that up with the powers that be." "Thanks.  And while you're at it, would you mention the Purell that's everywhere and makes us ill?").  After a few careful rinsings with clear water, I had a new fiberglass cast installed.

If you ever need a cast, go for fiberglass.  It hardens in ten minutes, instead of the 48 hours that plaster takes; is much lighter than plaster, and (at least in theory) won't crack like plaster.  It also is available in a variety of colours; I picked blue, of a choice of blue, white, and glow-in-the-dark (I imagine a particular LJer is plotting a fracture just to get a glow-in-the-dark cast). That was the selection at the QCH, the manufacturer (3M) makes the stuff in 113 patient-pleasing colours.  (Sorry, that should have been 13, not 113, colours)

So far, so good.

Comments

[henrytroup.livejournal.com]

Fibreglass is also much more water-resistant. (But keep it dry anyway, the inner stuff can get nasty if it gets wet.)

But you can't get autographs on the fibreglass ones.