Road Trip

I had an amazing trip. I stopped every hour and walked about 15-20 minutes. Any longer than that and my leg started to ache. I wore a loose sun dress so there wasn't any areas that were being compressed. I wore both my arm sleeves. (I do wear compression on both arms, ugh!) I was going to wear my Bioflect leggings. However, I decided that might be too much. So I wore them the day after I arrived and that helped get most of the swelling down and out of my leg. My drive was 9 1/2 hours if I drove straight through. I split the drive between 2 days with 5 hours drive time on each day. That really worked well for me. I also took back road highways. I was able to put on my cruise control and not use my legs a lot. That really helped. Also, keeping my arms propped on the pillows was a big life saver. I was able to keep them stretched out and not bent. I also wore a very loose bra. I find the tighter the bra, the more swelling I have under my arm.

Whoever says lymphedema doesn't spread has obviously not done a lot of research on it. We think mine spread to my other arm and trunk after all the reconstruction surgeries I had. It was pushed into my leg when I did too much on another vacation. I also had a hard hysterectomy and my appendix removed . Those surgeries could have also contributed to my lymph flow being changed when I overdid it on the vacation.

I had picnics on the way there and back for lunch. I also packed all my own snacks, so I wouldn't stop and pick up junk food along the way. Some of the things I took:

Celery - Organic no sugar added peanut butter - for my celery.

Beets - I brought beet juice to drink. I also use this to help control my blood pressure.

Strawberries & Blue Berries - I bagged these up in snack bags, so I could grab and have a good snack or add to my lunch or breakfast.

Bananas

Apples

Greek Yogurt

Bone Broth - I brought a couple of individual little cartons. On days I was run down and tired and heated this up and drank it as an energizer.

Small individual cans of tuna.

Non GMO Seed Crackers

Cheese Sticks

Almonds / Walnuts / Pistachios

Breakfast:

Oatmeal with blueberries / or / Greek Yogurt with Blueberries or Strawberries, or both.

Lunch:

Tuna on crackers

Cheese

Celery

Banana

Snack:

Celery with Peanut butter or an Apple with almonds

Dinner:

I would eat out, and keep everything as low sodium as possible.

I mixed and matched all these on different days. I also got large water bottles. Poured a little water out of each one and froze all of them except the first two I would drink. I then used those as my ice to keep my cooler cold. As I used one, I would refill and refreeze along the way at night. This ensured I always had plenty of cold water to drink along the way. I got a little basket to keep all my dry stuff in and set it on top of all my cold stuff in the cooler. That way it wasn't too hot in the car when I would stop along the way. It was also nice having more snack type food. It filled me up, but didn't make me feel tired from over eating at a restaurant with a lot of carbs.

I will also be the first to admit that I am a chocoholic. I only took individual squares of 72% dark chocolate and when I felt the need to be bad, I would eat one of those. If I had the whole open container I would have gone to town. This helped control that too.

This was probably far more than you wanted to know. I just found this worked really well for me. I only had one day I swelled really bad while I was out. It was a day I got to hot for too long. Otherwise, I did really great on the trip. If you have any other questions please let me know.