The era of taping a plastic bag around your broken arm to take a shower may be about to end!
Anyone who’s ever had a broken arm or leg knows the drill here: you get a big, bulky plaster cast to keep everything in place while the bone heals.
And there’s a long list of stuff you can’t do while you’re in the cast.
Swimming is out, showering is hard, and if you get an itch under there, well, there’s not much you can do but suffer and wait.
But that may all be about to change.
There’s a new medical startup called Cast 21, and, as startups do, they’re looking to disrupt those traditional plaster cast paradigms.
They wrap the arm in a mesh sleeve, which they fill with a liquid resin.
That stuff hardens in 10 to 15 minutes… and that’s enough to let the bones heal correctly.
Most of the skin is still exposed rather than being wrapped up inside the plaster.
It’s flexible and waterproof. Wearers can take baths, go to the pool, whatever they want. They can scratch itches, too!
And removing these casts is a lot less intense than that whirring saw they use to take plaster casts off.
This is new technology, so you’re not necessarily going to be able to slip one of these on if you break your arm tomorrow.
So if for some odd reason you’re planning on breaking your arm, it’s best to hold off.
Today is National Cookie Day, and it may require that we take a trip to Joplin, Missouri, which is home to the National Cookie Cutter Museum.
If you want to take a trip back through the long history of cookie cutters, this is the place.
And visitors can, upon request, get a free plastic cookie cutter to take home!
Waterproof cast lets patients swim with broken bones (Yahoo Sports)
National Cookie Cutter Historical Museum
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