cut my cast off

Just tell him the voices told you to do it.
:roll:

You can always tell 'em someone just robbed you and stole the cast.

Doing this type of thing can cause bones to heal incorrectly, could cause you problems down the road. Problems like pain every time you try to play or when you play for extended periods. Not worth it.

Ask your doctor if there is a removable 1/2 cast he could give you. That's what I got when I broke my wrist, I could take it off for showers and stuff. Still didn't play until it healed though.

Tell the doc that you were mugged by a penniless theatre producer who had a play but desperately needed a cast. :lol:

Yea I suppose you should be scolded.
Bad, Bad, Bad, Maxrumble (i am shaking my finger at you)
If you are lucky you will be ok but there is a chance you may have made things worse and end up without the use of that hand for even longer than if you had left it alone.
At any rate whats done is done. Be careful with it , please.
I wish you the best and hope for a speedy recovery.

I broke my wrist 3 years ago and the inital x-rays didn't catch it. It wasn't until a new x-ray tech took the picture at a different angle that they caught it. Good thing too because I broke my scaffiod bone (the funny shaped bone between the thumb and pointer finger) and if it hadn't been casted the bone may well have died and then I would have been screwed.

Go down to your local bowling center and pick yourself up a wrist guard. They have a steel shaft in them to keep the wrist straight when bowling. Could be a life saver for you and the doctor may even say it is enough. Plus it lets your fingers move free so you may be able to play.

Of course your going to tell him you ran out to buy this thing immediately when you were mugged and they stole your cast, all your picks and a spare set of strings.

Tell the doc that you were mugged by a penniless theatre producer who had a play but desperately needed a cast. :lol:

greybeard that is atrocious, but it still made me smile :)

If you had a complete set of x-rays done and had them examined by a compitent radiologist and there's no break, then removing the cast is probably the best thing you could have done.

Seriously.

While there's no clear consensus on what is the best treatment for minor fractures, at least one line of thinking is that allowing the muscles to atrophe slows healing rather than speeds it up. A view that is backed up by some pretty good research. Having the arm be immobile for 9 days will be more than enough time for any "bad sprain" and if there is a minor fracture using the arm is actually good for it unless you've got something like a compound fracture.

All of the above, btw, is from my sister-in-law the radiologist who happened to be on the phone with my wife when I read the post.

I know how u were feeling, i broke my wrist mountain biking one time and glued a pick to it... it sorta worked but it felt really akward, then it snapped off. Didnt really matter tho cause i broke the cast on a big multi-day ride into the woods and just kept it off.

Just felt like ranting.

broke both wrists once and each wrist at diffrent times(motocross and bmx are the best things ever). All 3 times the casts lasted about 3 weeks.
100 years ago people didn't do casts they just took it easy. I suggest you do the same.

I don't think you should do anything other than get in touch with your doctor, and tell him you didn't follow his advice.
Patzer, I think the doctor who saw the injury is more qualified than anyone at this point.

lol Greybeard, very funny.

I don't think you should do anything other than get in touch with your doctor, and tell him you didn't follow his advice.
Patzer, I think the doctor who saw the injury is more qualified than anyone at this point.

My statement was fairly well qualified with a few "ifs" and shouldn't be construed as medical advice.

I don't know if he did have a full set of x-rays or not.
I don't know if they were examined by a compitent radiologist or not.
I don't know if there is a break or not.

All that said, never forget that half the physicians out there are worse than average. And the average physician isn't that good.

Misdiagnosis rates in the ICU or Emergency Department have been studied, with rates ranging from 20% to 40%.

Misdiagnosis rates in radiology range from 10% to 90% depending on the procedure and protocol, with an average rate of about 30% being considered the norm.

I broke my right arm a number of years back. It was really broken...very clear fracture in three places and they initially intend to put pins in my arm to set it (but they didnt), if you X-rayed my arm now, you wouldn't need any medical training to see where the break was... the bones are crooked at that point.

The break was very close to my elbow so I had a cast such that my arm was bent and in a sling. When they took the cast off finally, I could not move my arm very well. I had to go through quite a bit of physical therapy before I got the complete range of motion back in my arm.

Over the course of the whole thing I saw 3 different doctors (the doctor when they were putting the cast on, the doctor when they decided to take teh cast off, and the doctor that oversaw my physical therapy). Every one of them had a different opinion for how my cast should have been handled.

I won't say that any of them are right or wrong, since today my arm works just fine and I have full range of motion, but I know that different doctors will decide to do very different things to the same patient.

All of that being said, you probably should follow the guidance of whatever doctor is overseeing your case. Being a doctor is an art and a science at the same time, and I imagine they are doing what they think is the best for you.