I have lymphoedema in my right breast, arm and hand. My hand is the biggest problem as it gets very swollen on the upper side but also my palm side swells. This is very uncomfortable and also causes my hand to cramp across the palm, especially when I’m gripping eg., riding my scooter and gripping the accelerator. My Lymph nurse has been brilliant and has tried compression garments, bandaging, tape, massaging me, teaching me to massage myself. But we can’t seem to get on top of it. She said in 12 years she has never seen palm swelling like I have. I just wondered if anyone else has it and if so, has anything been of help in reducing it? Very grateful for any advice.
Sorry to hear your hand is giving you so much trouble; what a downer - it sounds as tho’ your nurse is doing her best for you.
Just a couple of thoughts - has she suggested CDT? - Complex Decongestive Therapy - a course of compression bandaging combined with MLD - it’s very intensive; you get MLD every day and then rebandaged. This very often has good results, as nothing gets a chance to regress between treatments. Of course, being both intensive and specialised, it is likely to be in short supply!
Also, and this is probably a silly question, but I’m going to ask it anyway; is it possible that your arm sleeve is pushing fluid into your hand, ie that it is not quite doing its job properly?
Hope things improve for you soon - let us know how you get on.
Thanks so much for this. She has suggested that another course of action may be to have me in every day to massage so maybe she is thinking about that although resources there are tight and it may be a few months.
But I think you’re right with the compression garment. It’s problematic as I can’t tolerate a strong glove…I get little nodules on my tendons and the areas between my fingers get incredibly painful. I’m sure the current one which is a made-to-measure glove and sleeve in one is doing this and seems to be less effective that the seperate glove and sleeve I’ve been wearing.
I’m not hugely swollen in my arm, I think it’s about 20% and it would all be more manageable if it weren’t for the palm which causes the problem with function.
If we come up with anything successful I’ll let people here know as I can’t be the only one with palm problems.
Hi I had very similar problem to you and agree with Bahons that sleeve may be problem.My arm was not measuring any bigger to have a larger sleeve so BC nurse changed mine to a lighter grade compression which seems to help. Kitty x
Just had a thought…you (amd maybe your lymphoedema nurse as well, who knows?) may want to take a look at this site.
w x 3 dot stepup-speakout dot org
(It’s not an ‘official’ site, so I have to post the link as above - sorry)
I cannot recommend it highly enough; it is a mine of information and contains, among a host of items of interest, details of products (it’s not a mail order site, btw) such as ‘swell spots’ that can used to treat localised swelling.