How to Care for Your Cast

Today we’re going to go over how to care for your new cast. So once your new cast is on, there are a couple of rules that will make your life a lot easier, and your child’s life a lot easier once they do have the cast. So the first rule is to keep it clean and dry, so right now it’s very dry, it was just put on. But when your kid takes a shower, you can put a bag over it or if there… What I’ve heard works best from parents is they do double-sided saran wrap on both sides of the cast, then they do a washcloth, then a bag over the whole thing. That way any moisture or water that makes it past the bag will get caught up in the other stuff. That’ll keep it nice and dry. If the ends get a little wet, you can use cold air with a blow dryer and just help dry them up. If it gets absolutely soaked, you need to come back, you need to get a new cast. The reason that’s important is because if this is soaked, it can cause skin maceration. it’s kind of like stepping in a puddle with a shoe and sock on, not taking your shoe and sock off for the whole day, you take it off at the end of the day, your skin is real white and wrinkly and gross. It’s like that but much worse it’ll cause a lot of discomfort, and we don’t want any of that to happen. For itching, the cast is very hard. So you can knock on it, the vibration might help any itch. You can blow cold air down the ends of it, again with a blow dryer and it’ll help dry up any sweat. That’ll also help with the itching, or even children’s Benadryl. We don’t want you to stick anything down in there. So some people who had a cast back in the day would say “Yeah I used to use a hanger or a ruler, a pencil…”, no, don’t do any of that. Children’s Benadryl, knocking, that will suffice. And then the last rule, and most importantly to prevent re-injury, is we don’t want anyone to do anything that might cause them to fall and further injure the arm. And, another little tidbit is it’s not a weapon. Don’t bonk any siblings with this, don’t bonk your parents, be careful with your furniture, it’ll scuff your furniture. But those are the big ones, and you can always call us if you have further questions.