Not only blood flows from our hands and feet towards the heart, but also lymph. Lymph is part of the lymphatic system. She answers first of all for fluid balance.
And if there is an obstacle in the way of the outflow of lymph, then this arm or leg will swell. This swelling is very disturbing and difficult to deal with.
Usually, lymphedema of the hand occurs during the treatment of some kind of neoplasm, when the lymph nodes are removed from the armpit. The outflow of lymph from the hand is disturbed and the hand swells.
What to do
If lymphedema has already appeared on the arm, then it will be necessary to regularly measure your swollen arm in several places:
- on the palm at the base of the fingers;
- on the wrist;
- 10 centimeters below the elbow;
- 10 centimeters above the elbow.
It is important to understand in which direction the swelling is changing. Such a swollen arm can easily be attacked by an infection that eats up the remnants of normal lymphatic vessels. Then the hand will swell even more.
Therefore, you still need to monitor not only the swelling and girth itself, but also for redness on the skin, all sorts of sores, hot painful places.
Infection
To prevent the infection from attacking a swollen hand, it is necessary to smear with moisturizers, protect the skin from the sun, and not allow any cats scratch a sore hand, instantly heal all such scratches and wear gloves when there is a chance to peel off your fingers or plant splinter.
Hands up
More often you need to keep your hand in an elevated position. So the water will flow by itself towards the heart.
Jersey
For the hand, exactly the same compression hosiery was invented as for the legs. It is also important that such jersey also grasps the brush with a special glove.
No unnecessary procedures
Do not poke holes in your swollen arm again, take blood for analysis, stick a vaccine into your shoulder, or measure blood pressure. Do this with your healthy hand.
If both arms are like this, then blood pressure can be measured on the leg.
If you measure blood pressure on a sore arm, it is better to do it with a mechanical tonometer. The person who will be measuring the pressure should inflate the cuff just slightly above the intended pressure level.
Lymphatic drainage massage
A very difficult thing that someone who deals with cancer patients has to do. There, this massage is joined by multi-layer bandaging and physical exercises. This requires a physical therapy instructor. That is, in a beauty salon they will not do such a thing for you.
There is a lot in this topic. Ask.
