MLD Therapy and Wrapping - Part Two

By Christina Routon

I felt strange during my first treatment visit to Jodi, my therapist. It had nothing to do with her - it was all the stuff in my head. I was wearing a skirt, I felt self-conscious of how I looked, and I just didn't feel myself. I never really got over those feelings, but I learned to deal with them.

Remember - feelings aren't reality.

Jodi made me feel as comfortable as possible. As she massaged my legs, we talked about our families, our jobs, what we were doing for Halloween. I asked her questions about lipedema and the therapy. Of course, we had no idea what progress would be made, if any. I felt relaxed and completely at ease. She confirmed the lump on the side of my ankle was a lipoma. I never knew it had a name. It was just a lump that would sometimes swell if I'd been on my feet most of the day.

The massage lasted about forty-five minutes. I wore a loose pair of capri-length workout pants under my skirt. I was used to wearing hose couldn't go out without wearing something over my legs. I took them off and Jodi proceeded to wrap my legs for the first time.

She started by applying lotion. The room was chilly and the cream was cold. She smoothed it into my skin, then measured and cut a pair of knit stockings. These aren't actual stockings with silicone at the top to hold them up. They're basically a tube of knitted material that she cut to size. She slipped it over my leg and I helped pull it up to the thigh.

The next step was cotton padding. The cotton is between the stockings and the wraps so they won't harm the skin. So far so good. My legs grew warmer as they were covered.

I ended up with five wraps on each leg. I was wrapped from foot to thigh, the smallest wrap on my foot and the largest over my thigh. Jodi walked me through the wrapping procedure so I could fix them myself if they came loose and so that my husband could help me when he was home.

The wraps were tight, but not painful. Many women with lipedema have debilitating pain in their legs. It's so bad they can't bear to be touched. I'm thankful I don't have pain. My legs may ache at the end of the day, but they're not so painful I can't be touched.

When the wraps were finished I pulled my capri-length sweats over them, then straightened my skirt. Jodi helped me put on the shoes I'd brought, a pair of hospital boot type sandals with velcro fasteners. After the first day, I ended up mostly wearing my tennis shoes and kept the hospital sandals for home. I wore the wraps for two days, taking sponge baths and sleeping in them.

I spend the first week hating the wraps. The bandages around the thighs would slip, along with the stocking, and the material would bunch up around my knee. One day the right leg would fall, the next it would be the left. I felt as if I was in the restroom at work every few minutes, redoing the wraps. I sat at my desk as much as possible as moving around made them fall faster. By the second week of wrapping, Jodi cut two pieces of stretchy material called Tubi-Grip (I called it Turbo Grip!) to place around the top of the wraps. The Tubi-Grip helped everything stay up the way it was supposed to and I spent less time fixing falling wraps. I wished she'd given me some earlier.

I noticed a change in how my legs felt by the third day when I removed them to shower. The skin was much softer to the touch, most likely due to the lotion used and the heat generated by the wraps. I enjoyed how my skin felt so much I've continued using a moisturizing lotion on my legs daily.

I had an issue with my legs itching where the wraps bunched around my knee. Jodi used hydrocortisone cream around my knees to help combat the itching.

We measured after the first week. By then I was asking her about getting my compression hose. I was more than ready to stop wearing the wraps, and it had only been a week. We discussed waiting at least one more week to see how the measurements worked out.

The first week's results were amazing! Based on her measurements, I lost almost two liters of fluid in one week. My calves didn't seem to have changed much visually, but the measurements showed they did  lower. My skin was feeling better and there was a visible difference in my upper thighs.

Jodi compared my loss to a two-liter soda bottle, three-quarters full. I agreed to wait one more week before ordering the hose and we set up our next set of appointments.

Next week - Final Measurements, Getting the Hose, Dealing with Work, the Public, and Thoughts in my Head