Tag: splints

Well, I’ve been buying more socks

Believe it or not, I’ve actually managed to expand my huge sock collection that I’ve blogged about so often. I have ones of all different kinds for when my feet get cold, for sleeping in, and for when I’m wearing splints. Turns out I didn’t have as many of type number three as I thought, though…

Now that I’m starting to wear splints again, I found that I didn’t have any long socks that come up to, or over my knees. I didn’t realise this until I actually went looking for them in my sock drawer and my excess sock bag and found that I only had two pairs left! I was quite surprised by this because when I used to have splints before, a lot of the socks I owned were long because I wore my splints of often. I don’t really like the feeling of the splint against my bare skin, and I sometimes find that it gets on my nerves if I’ve been walking round in them all day. Having longer socks that came up my lower leg to around my knee made them more comfortable for me, and if the socks came over my knees I would just roll that part back down over the top of the splint, if that makes sense. I find that tights are good too.

 

Over time I guess the ones I used to have all got worn out and had to be thrown away, so I decided that I should probably buy some more.

Although now my sock collection is taking up a drawer, a bag, and has now started to progress into taking up room in a storage box too! Not that that will ever stop me buying any more. I like them all too much for that! And, I’ll still need all my shorter ones for days when I’m not wearing splints and my thicker ones for when it gets cold, right?

At least I should be able to wear these new ones as matching pairs for a while at least. That said, I did buy them in a couple of different styles and patterns so they will probably end up being worn as odd at some point…

My night splints

My night splints
My night splints

When I got my new night/resting splints last week, I was surprised at just how similar they look to the ones that I wear during the day, well, in my opinion at least.

I didn’t know what to expect from these ones. I’ve had a type of night splints before but I was told that they would be different to those, so it was a bit like watching somebody unwrapping a present when they got taken out of the bag at my appointment.

They do look slightly different, though. As you can see from these pictures,

My day splints
My day splints

the resting/night ones are white, while I chose to have black ones during the day. The night time ones also have more padding all along the inside, but you can’t tell that from the pictures , I don’t think, because it’s the same colour as the splint itself. I think they are a slightly different shape around the foot. When I tried them on at the appointment I was surprised at how comfy they seemed.

For a while, I spent some time just wearing them in sitting so that I could get used to how they felt before I decided to try them overnight, which I did last night.

I still can’t quite get them on myself, so my mum helped me out before I went to sleep. It took me a little bit of time to get comfortable, but once I did, I don’t think they disturbed my shut eye. I think that wearing these splints in bed might take a bit of getting used to, but hopefully it won’t take too long.

I managed to keep them on for a few hours before I needed to get up in the middle of the night. At this point I had to take them off again because they don’t have any grips on the bottom for walking in. I can take them off by myself, but I haven’t found a way to be able to get them on yet so I’ll have to experiment to try find one. My day splints don’t have grips on either, but I wear these with shoes because they are for during the day when I’m moving around. The night splints are to wear at bedtime, or for periods when I’m going to be sat resting rather than moving.

Hopefully, I’ll manage to put these on by myself soon, but until then I didn’t fancy waking anyone else up to help me with them again because I think it was about 2am at this point, and I don’t think anyone would’ve been best pleased with me. In the end, I decided to keep them off for the rest of the night because my feet were starting to feel like they getting to the point where they’d had enough for one day anyway. When I did remove them, I could tell that’d I’d had been wearing them though, in a good way.

I guess I’ll just have to get into the habit of taking a glass of water to bed with me until I can manage to put them on for myself.

I’m going to try and spent a couple of hours sat in them today while I’m at the computer or something to make up for the time that I didn’t have them on.

New Splints update

My new splints
My new splints

So, I’ve worn my new splints a few times now, and the right one feels quite comfortable, which is good.

The left one isn’t quite as comfy.

It just feels too tight on the sides and underneath parts of my feet and it leaves red marks when I’ve been walking on it around the house. It’s not as easy to get my foot into either. I’ve managed to avoid any blisters so far though, which is a bonus. These things just happen sometimes, it’s not anybody’s fault but hopefully it will be easy to fix.

I’ve spoken to the hospital and they’ve said that I can go back in and they’ll try and heat it up a little so they can try and make it a little less snug for me, which should help.

I’ll let you know how this all goes.

My new splints

My new splints
My new splints

My serial casting pots got taken off yesterday which I was very happy about, and my new day time splints (also called AFOs) have also arrived.

I had the pots taken off yesterday morning and then went straight round to the department that deals with the splints to get them fitted.

It looks like the serial casting has helped to make my ankles less tight, which is what we wanted. I’m not entirely sure how much difference it has made, but I have an appointment with the physio in a couple of weeks so she’ll be able to give me a better idea.

When I first came out of the casts my ankles ached for quite a while afterwards but my mum and I did a bit of stretching and that has passed now, which is really quite nice.

The thing that took me by surprise the most was how strange I found it when I first put my new splints on yesterday. I had them for most of my childhood but stopped wearing them about a year ago when it was decided that we would try to see how well callipers worked for me.

Although I’m sure they work well for a lot of people, this wasn’t the case for me because I had a lot of problems with blistering. This is why we made the choice to give splints another go after we had relieved some of the tightness in my ankles by doing the serial casting.

I kind of thought that because I’d worn splints for so long before that it wouldn’t really feel odd to me, but it did. Now I just have to go through the process of bedding them in slowly a couple of hours at time until I get used to it again, which could take a while.

As I’m only on day two of the process, I’ll update you all about it a bit later on when I’ve got a bit more to say about it.

They fit inside a pair shoes that you can buy in the shops too although I have to buy them a size bigger than I would normally take without them and make sure that I get a pair that is wide enough to accommodate them.

I guess it’s time that I dug out my old collection of over-the-knee socks that I used to wear with my old ones. I find that helps to make them more comfy because it stops them sticking to the back of my legs.

I’ll let you all know how I get on.

 

Time for change

So, yesterday I took a trip to the hospital to have a discussion about my callipers and pick up some new boots that it’s hoped will help them stop cutting into me a giving e blisters quite so much. I went in there knowing that we’d also be looking at some of the other options that we could try. More on the new footwear in a minute, I promise.

A couple of weeks back, I went to a clinic appointment where someone suggested that we could try using something called Spring Splints at night instead, which I’ve never had before, but  they said I should discuss that further when I went to pick up my new shoes. I  go to a lot of my appointments on my own these days, (don’t you love being a grown up), but this time I asked my mum if she could come along for the ride to offer some insight into things that had worked well for me when I was a child.

After a bit of a debate, it was decided that we could give these Spring Splints a go when I’m resting, and also cast me for a pair of ridged ankle AFO splints for during the day. I’ve had AFOs before . There’s also discussion of using another course of using another method to help release some of the tightness in my ankles. It’s something that I had done a few times as a child and it worked really well. However, that is only at the discussion stages right now so I’ll mention that later on if it goes ahead.

My callipers
My callipers

Anyway, back to the shoes. They look pretty much the same as the ones in this picture, only with one extra strap, and not worn down, obviously. I’ve hunted high and low for a picture of my old splints, but I can’t find one because I used to wear them under trousers or jeans most of the time. Sorry.

When I got my new pair of boots that the callipers slot into, I found that they had an extra strap on the back that should make a difference to the position of my foot so I’ll keep trying to wear them for now until the new stuff comes through. I tried walking around in them for a bit and it’s so far, so good, minus the usual feelings of having to break in any new gear you get for your feet anyway.

I’m nervous about trying the new splints but I’m excited too. I’m willing to try anything that might help in the long or short term so I’ll just have to keep an open mind and see how it goes.

If you or someone you know has tried any of these types of splints, I’d be really grateful if you could leave me a comment or tweet me.

And so, let’s hope that today’s appointment with the occupational therapist goes as well!