Showering

Everyone needs to stay clean, even if they don’t go anywhere often (like me most of the time during this recovery process). But casts cannot get wet. Hence, there is a bit of a dilemma, isn’t there? Well, at first, and still half the time, we’re doing this by just giving me sponge baths. This gets most of my skin clean, but not all of it, and notably doesn’t clean my hair at all. So we do that about every other day.

On the opposite days, though as of now this has only been going for about 2 cycles, I take an actual shower. Firstly, since I cannot stand on both feet for the moment we use a shower bench that we put into the shower so I can sit down. But what we use to keep my cast completely dry is a product that a member of the Gillette Children’s casting staff recommended, DryPro. This is a latex sleeve we put over the cast leg that has a pump to create a vacuum seal around the cast by pumping out all the air. Then I can even place my right leg directly in the shower, and yet the cast will not get wet in the slightest. As such, I can shower (or even take a bath if I want) to get the entirety of my body with the exception of the parts in the cast completely clean, just like before (and after) this whole recovery process.

Of course, I need help getting myself clean like this, unlike when not in this recovery, but at least I can have a way to get quite clean regularly. That definitely helps a bit with regard to feeling better even amidst the (physical and otherwise) pains of this lengthy recovery process.