The "Palmolive" cold compress

[BadCat]

My wife had knee surgery last week, she has to keep ice on her knee most of the time due to swelling.

We have 4 drugstore "cold packs" in the freezer that we were cycling through, but they all take too long to get cold, and don't conform well to the knee.

The surgeon told us about this little trick...

Get a bottle of GREEN Palmolive dish soap....he said it has to be the GREEN one, the others won't work.

Pour it into a 1 gallon ZipLock bag (the ones with the actual little zipper preferred)...and put in freezer.

Works amazingly well, gets REAL cold REAL fast...stays cold a long time...it's a kind of light lime green gel slop, and it conforms like a gel.

Total cost...$3

Give it a try next time you screw a part of yourself up.

[Janice]

Nice one. Thanks BadCat. :cool:

[SaintLouieWoman]

Thanks for the hint. The physical therapists told me their trick, take one bottle (standard size) of rubbing alcohol to 2 bottles of water. Put in that ZipLock bag and freeze. They had me do 2, 1 for top of knee and 1 for under the knee.

I've been getting lazy and not icing the leg and it's still swollen. :frown-new:

They told me it could be up to a year before all the swelling goes down.. Hope your wife is better in the patience department than I am. I'm just sick of all this stuff.

Be sure she faithfully does the physical theapy thing. My insurance is no longer paying for the PT, so I joined their "gym" and using the PT equipment. I'm so used to doing it, doesn't seem to matter. In fact I can do more exercises since I do them quicker and don't have to wait for them to tell me to do what I know comes next. :biggrin-new: