formernyer
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2006
I know this is very OT, but this is the board I post on most, so I decided to put it here...
We were at a park on Wednesday morning with my daughter's 5th grade class following her Elementary School Graduation ceremony. She and I were playing chicken on the monkey bars and she ended up falling bad...landed on her elbow. Long story short, her elbow is broken.
The orthopedist told us that it is a clean break and should heal fairly quickly. He said he expected her to be in a permanent splint for three weeks, followed by three weeks in a removeable brace. He wants to re-xray next Thursday, just to be sure it's healing correctly.
Here's what he did to her...
He took the casting material, but rather than unrolling it and wrapping it around her arm, he just molded the entire wad under her arm (to about halfway between the elbow and shoulder), then wrapped the entire arm in gauze. Once the cast on the bottom hardened, he wrapped the gauze in Ace bandages. Then he wrapped the bandages in sugical tape to hold it all down.
Can somebody tell me how this differs from just using a hard cast? Obviously, my daughter doesn't want to be in a cast at all, but she'd much prefer a "real" cast to this option. This thing seems to provide the same support and it's just as permanent, but it's easier to "pick" at, it's itchier and tighter according to her (she had a cast before when she was 5), and if she's gotta be permanently wrapped, she'd at least rather have the "novelty" of being able to have a colored cast that her friends can sign and she can keep.
Obviously, we are doing whatever the docs recommend for her, but I'm just curious as to why they would do this instead of a full hard cast? At first I thought it was for insurance reasons, but actually this option used more supplies/materials than the wrapped hard cast would have.
We were at a park on Wednesday morning with my daughter's 5th grade class following her Elementary School Graduation ceremony. She and I were playing chicken on the monkey bars and she ended up falling bad...landed on her elbow. Long story short, her elbow is broken.
The orthopedist told us that it is a clean break and should heal fairly quickly. He said he expected her to be in a permanent splint for three weeks, followed by three weeks in a removeable brace. He wants to re-xray next Thursday, just to be sure it's healing correctly.
Here's what he did to her...
He took the casting material, but rather than unrolling it and wrapping it around her arm, he just molded the entire wad under her arm (to about halfway between the elbow and shoulder), then wrapped the entire arm in gauze. Once the cast on the bottom hardened, he wrapped the gauze in Ace bandages. Then he wrapped the bandages in sugical tape to hold it all down.
Can somebody tell me how this differs from just using a hard cast? Obviously, my daughter doesn't want to be in a cast at all, but she'd much prefer a "real" cast to this option. This thing seems to provide the same support and it's just as permanent, but it's easier to "pick" at, it's itchier and tighter according to her (she had a cast before when she was 5), and if she's gotta be permanently wrapped, she'd at least rather have the "novelty" of being able to have a colored cast that her friends can sign and she can keep.
Obviously, we are doing whatever the docs recommend for her, but I'm just curious as to why they would do this instead of a full hard cast? At first I thought it was for insurance reasons, but actually this option used more supplies/materials than the wrapped hard cast would have.