I Could Not Get My Compression Socks On. So I Stopped Wearing Them, And My Swollen Ankles Got Worse.

My doctor told me to wear compression stockings for my swollen ankles. With arthritis in both thumbs I could not pull them over my heel, so they went in a drawer. A nurse showed me a pair that zips up the side, and I have worn compression every day since.

My ankles were swollen by four o'clock every afternoon

I worked in a school office for 31 years, most of it at a desk. The last few years before I retired, I noticed my shoes were tight by the time the buses left. By dinner my ankles were puffy, and when I took my socks off there was a deep dent around each leg that stayed for an hour.

In the morning they were fine. By late afternoon they were swollen again. My legs felt heavy and tired after nothing more than a trip to the grocery store.

I cut out salt. I drank more water. I put my feet up on a pillow in the evenings. The swelling came back the next afternoon, every afternoon.

"Wear compression stockings for the swelling in your legs"

My doctor pressed her thumb into my shin above the ankle and it left a pit. She said it was fluid collecting in my lower legs and that I needed to wear compression stockings every day. She wrote a prescription and I picked up two pairs at the medical supply store.

Nobody told me what it takes to get them on.

I have arthritis in both thumbs. I also do not bend the way I did at 40. I sat on the edge of the bed the first morning and pulled for ten minutes. The stocking would go over my toes and then stop dead at my heel. My thumbs were throbbing. I was out of breath and I had one leg done.

I tried rubber gloves. I tried the metal frame the store sold me for another thirty dollars. I tried asking my husband, which worked until the morning he had to leave early. After three weeks the stockings went into my dresser drawer and they stayed there.

Without compression, the swelling in my ankles got worse

I did not tell my doctor I had stopped. I was embarrassed that I could not dress myself.

Over the next year the swelling started earlier in the day. By two o'clock my ankles were over the tops of my shoes. The skin above them felt tight and looked shiny. I stopped wearing skirts. I turned down a bus trip to Branson with my church group because I knew what my legs would look like after six hours in a seat.

The vein nurse who asked whether I could get my stockings on

My doctor sent me to a vein clinic. The nurse who saw me was Diane Mercer, RN. Twenty-six years of fitting people with compression.

The first thing she asked was not about salt. She asked, "Are you wearing your stockings?" I said no. She asked, "Is it because you can't get them on?" I nearly cried.

She told me she had the same trouble herself at 58, when the arthritis reached her own wrists, and she had spent a career putting these on other people.

What was actually causing my swollen ankles: weak valves in the leg veins

She drew it for me. Inside the veins of the leg there are small one-way valves. When you walk, the calf muscle tightens and pushes blood up toward the heart, and each valve closes behind it so the blood cannot drop back.

With age the valves stretch and stop closing all the way. Blood falls back down and collects in the veins at the ankle. The pressure builds through the day and presses fluid out of the vein into the tissue around it. That fluid was my swelling, and it is why I was fine every morning and puffy every afternoon.

A year of swelling, and the thing that would have helped was sitting in my drawer because of one step I could not do.

Compression socks that zip up the side, so nothing is pulled over the heel

She took a pair of black knee-high socks out of a cabinet. They had a zipper running down the side of the calf, from the top to just above the ankle bone. She unzipped one and it opened wide.

I put my foot in the way I would put it into a slipper. She had me pull the zipper up myself. It closed without a fight, and there was a soft flap of fabric behind it so the zipper did not touch my skin. The sock was snug from my ankle to just below my knee. The whole thing took perhaps ten seconds.

The ones she recommended are Zipvera Zip-Up Compression Socks. I did the second leg in her office by myself, and I walked out wearing them.

See the Zipvera buy-1-get-1 offer90-day money-back guarantee

Shoes that still fit at dinner time

That was in March. I zip them on before breakfast, before the swelling has a chance to start, and I unzip them when I get ready for bed. I have not missed a day, because there is no longer a reason to.

The first thing I noticed was my shoes. They fit at five o'clock the way they fit at eight in the morning. The dent above my ankle was gone, because there is no tight band at the top. My legs did not have that heavy feeling when I stood up from the couch.

In September I went on the church bus trip I had turned down the year before. Six hours each way. I wore the black pair under my slacks and nobody knew.

I can only tell you what happened to me, and everyone is different. But if you have a pair of compression stockings in a drawer because you cannot get them on, you already know which part of this story is yours.

What I tell my friends who cannot get their compression socks on

Buy two pairs, because you will wear them every day and one will always be in the wash. They sell them buy-one-pair-get-one-free, so an order is two pairs for $60, which is $30 a pair instead of $120 for two. Shipping in the US is free.

Measure around your ankle and around your calf before you order. They come in four sizes up to a 3XL, and in black or beige. I wear the L/XL. My sister in Dubuque has much larger calves than I do and the 3XL fits her. There is a 90-day money-back guarantee, so if you are not glad you bought them you email and get a full refund.