It is a daily challenge. You are going to need to use your prosthetic and/or liner each and every day when you need to be mobile and achieve completion of Life’s necessary tasks. With daily use of your prosthetic limb comes the possibility of sore patches, chaffing, redness and irritation where your skin of your residual limb and prosthetic meet. If left unattended, this continual rubbing will cause extreme discomfort and may cause infection in sores created. As always it is wise to make an appointment with your prosthetist to go over any concerns and ideas you may have to combat those concerns. Collect some of the suggested ideas and products spoken about below, take them with you and have the list ready to present in your discussion with your Prosthetist. The issue you are having could very well be the simplest of solutions…. the socket of your prosthetic needs adjusting. BUT! If it is not the socket and you need help eliminating discomfort, we have reached out to other amputees and received their solutions to sore patches that just might work for you too!!
Let’s have a little discussion about our first product, Compeed Blister Plasters, which was brought up by an amputee who has been working to help gather resources for fellow amputees and their families to better cope and understand living life with a prosthetic limb.
This product is out of the United Kingdom but can be purchased and shipped to the United States. There are also Compeed Blister Plasters offered through Amazon, in the U.S., which may be the sizes you are searching for. The plasters use an active gel to provide an abundance of cushion for reducing friction thus relieving any soreness or irritation that may come about from uncomfortable rubbing.
Another product that was mentioned was Band-Aid Blister Block Cushions. Again, these use a gel design to take pressure off of points that are rubbing against one another to provide more comfort and less irritation or creation of sores.
Or how about this option presented through listening to other fellow amputees: Glidewear Prosthetic Liner Patch? These liner patches were raved about as many felt they performed superbly, were long lasting, made life more comfortable throughout many hiking adventures or distance runs, allowed longer daily wear of prosthetic limbs and even aided in healing previous sores that had made life with a prosthetic a bit challenging.
One last option, which is more of an economical, do it yourself idea was the that of running to the fabric store, making your way to the quilting section and purchasing what is called cuddle cloth. Buying Cuddle Cloth by the yard permits you to buy as much or as little as you need, cut it to the length and size desired for cushioning. Also making this a more affordable approach, you can normally find coupons for your local fabric stores which would allow you to get even more for your money!
We’ve started you off with a few options here for your list of talking points, and there are so many more if you want to put some more research time into it. Please be aware that the above suggestions are only for health information. Please do speak with your physician or prosthetist for any and all medical advice you are seeking.