Day 47: vacocast

Day 47, March 19, 2012: Vacocast Day 1

Vacocast arrived today. Just saw yesterday somebody say they order one with a spare cloth liner... I don't see a spare cloth liner available as a product on the website. Maybe should have called in the order.

So the first thing out of the box that this is more moving parts in terms of initial adjustment than the standard cam boot. You adjust the footbase in one of three positions for your foot size. You adjust the back support for calf size (these are harder to pull out although the youtube video makes it look easy). Then you adjust the flexion for whereever you are in your rehabilitation.

This is where it's a bit weird. According to my doctor my foot was supposed to be at 30 degrees plantarflexion. 2 inserts were prescribed for the original cam boot. I never really thought or understood exactly how this 30 degrees was measured so didn't really think about it, until now. I set the vacocast for 30 degrees (setting 3 on the vacocast), and immediately knew that this was way more than what my foot was at. I tried putting the vacocast on at this angle but it just seemed too much/impractical (toe pointing so much down) considering my foot basically felt flat in the original cam boot. Even at 20 degrees it seemed like too much. At this point I had other things to do so I put off exploring this issue until later.

Later, I retried putting the vacocast on with the 10 degree setting. In this case I was just testing out the adjustments, so I didn't have the large curved base on the vacocast but 10 degrees felt the same as the original cam boot.

That makes me wonder if I spent too much time at this angle, or what the effect is/will be.

In any case, I plan on showing the two to the physical therapist tomorrow, as well as trying to drop by the doctor's office (in the same building) to show and get advice on the flexion setting for where I am at today (I don't want to wait 2 more weeks to my next doctor appointment, and I certainly don't want to go to the vacocast 30 unless this has to do with adding full weight bearing, which I am currently not doing, just some partial weight bearing).

Right now there is no immediate comfort difference (just sitting with leg elevated in the vacocast) but this could be because I've gotten used to the original cam boot.