The Hand to Shoulder Solution
Your new resource for hand, shoulder, and elbow pain. Together, we are giving pain the middle finger and gaining knowledge to live a better, pain-free life!
Discover what might be causing pain in your fingers, pain in your hand, pain in your wrist, pain in your arm, pain in your elbow, pain in your shoulder.
Learn about your body, arthritis, tendinitis, tennis elbow, fractures, golfer's elbow, and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Hosted by Carl Petitto, OT, CHT, and Certified Hand Therapist specializing in orthopedic conditions of the hand to shoulder. Also an expert in fabricating custom orthotics.
The Hand to Shoulder Solution
Ep44: Cast: exercises to do while in your cast
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Hello and welcome to the show, The Hand to Shoulder Solution, with me, Carl Petitto.
If you are experiencing pain in your arms and hands, this is your resource.
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This is a resource to help you mitigate pain at home and become more educated on what to ask your doctors and therapists. No medical advice will be given, and you should always see your medical professional for any questions.
Thank you, and welcome to the show!
Welcome back and thank you for subscribing to the Hand to Shoulder Solution Giving Pain the Middle Finger. I'm Colonel Petito. As an occupational therapist and a board certified hand therapist, I specialize in the fingertips through the shoulder. I want to talk to you about being in a cast. It's very important that when you are placed into a cast after, for example, a broken bone or fracture, it's very important to move the uninvolved joints. So, for example, if you're in a cast that immobilizes your wrist but your fingers are free and your elbow is free, I want to show you how to move those and how often and what you should do. It's very important to note that this is not medical advice. This is information sharing. You should always be seen by a healthcare provider. So firstly, let's use that first example. When you're put in a wrist cast and your fingers are free, it's very nice three times a day to bring your hand above your heart and close and open your fist 10 or 12 times and then also fully straighten your elbow and bend your elbow 10 or 12 times. Also, the cast might allow you to turn palm down a little bit and palm up a little bit. That's okay to do. Don't do anything forceful when most people go wrong is they they're in a cast and then they adopt a protective mode where they'll just hold themselves in a protective posture. Then the soft tissues, like the tendons that connect muscle to bone, for example, shorten up and the joints get very, very stiff and then folks have a very difficult time regaining movement after the cast has been removed. So now let's work our way upstream and let's talk about perhaps an elbow that is casted, which is pretty rare nowadays, but we'll talk about it. So the elbow is casted, the wrist is free, and if a person can bend their wrist toward their palm and let their fingers open and toward the back of the hand, let their fingers close and slowly do 10 or 15 of those, and then also some closing and opening of the fist. Now we can't forget the shoulder. I want to make a note about the shoulder. If, for example, the proximal or the upper part of the humerus, your upper arm bone, is fractured or broken, we don't use a cast for that, we'll use a sling.
Speaker 1:You know, always, of course, always follow your doctor's instructions, and a lot, of, a lot of providers will say, you know, just casually, keep your fingers moving, for example, but they don't necessarily mean keep them moving all day. I've been a patient too and as a patient you know you're a little bit nervous. You're ready to do exactly what you're told, and that's a good thing. But moving all day long and keeping them moving all day, that's that's a wrong thing to do, because that increases inflammation. That really starts to aggravate everything, even increases swelling. Anything can be overdone. So, three times a day, a couple of sets of 10 to 15 repetitions. So let's say you're in a wrist cast and you're moving the elbow, you're moving the fingers, like we just talked about.
Speaker 1:Also, don't forget about the shoulder. So the shoulder, all the way up, all the way back up to the side, hand behind the head, hand behind your back, across, reaching to the other shoulder and out to the side. A lot of movements of the shoulder. That shoulder has to be able to place the hand where it needs to be so the hand could be functional. So once again to the front, to the back. It goes up to the side, hand behind your head, hand behind your back, across your chest and all the way back out. How about you know? 10 repetitions to go through that routine, even if you wanted to do 10 to the front, to the back and then 10 to the side.
Speaker 1:Just keep that shoulder moving, but again, only three times per day. You don't want to overdo it, because you are healing from a fracture somewhere in your upper extremity. Now, if there's a cast on the elbow, you can still move the shoulder as long as you don't have a fracture in the shoulder area. So the main message today is move the uninvolved joints in accordance with instructions from your healthcare provider. If you adopt a protective posture and just stay in a protective posture all the time, that's going to be bad news for you because you're going to get very, very stiff. Thanks a lot for watching. A lot more to come. Thank you for subscribing to the channel and hitting the like button.