The Cold Wrap I Keep in the Freezer Next to the Crappie

The top shelf of my freezer has a bag of crappie fillets on one side and a Vive knee ice pack wrap on the other. Carol thinks that is funny. I think it is good organization. Both of them live up there for the same reason: the things I like doing are hard on my left knee.

I am 63. I put in 31 years as a union pipefitter, most of it kneeling on concrete or going up and down a ladder, and at 58 an orthopedist told me what I already suspected. Osteoarthritis in the left knee. The right one had a meniscus trimmed back when I was 47, so that is the good one now. No replacement, nothing scheduled. Just a knee that stiffens up and gets thick if I do not stay after it.

For a couple of years I iced it with a bag of frozen peas and a dish towel. Prop the leg on the ottoman, sit there until the peas went soft and I got cold, carry the whole mess back to the kitchen. It worked about as well as you would guess, which is to say I did it maybe half as often as I should have, because it was a chore. Carol watched me do that for one winter and then went and ordered the Vive without saying a word about it.

What came was a neoprene wrap, four adjustable straps, and three gel packs for the freezer. You slide a pack into the sleeve, lay the wrap over the knee, and close the straps with the hook and loop. Vive sizes it to fit knee circumferences up to 21 inches, which matters when you are not a small man and your leg has been carrying you around for four decades.

The routine since then, about 14 months now, is cold after work and warm before it. Cold after Tater gets his evening walk, or after a morning on Mark Twain Lake climbing in and out of a 14 foot jon boat and standing on a wet dock. On those days the knee is what I call puffy. Not screaming, just thick and slow. Fifteen or twenty minutes with a cold pack strapped on, in the recliner, and by the end of the news it has settled down enough to get up without thinking about it.

Warm works the other direction. The same packs go in the microwave, and on a stiff morning I heat one and wear it for fifteen minutes before I put Tater's leash on. It does not loosen the knee so much as take the edge off the first flight of stairs, and in a split-level house there is a flight of stairs in every direction you turn.

The peas were free and I used them half as often as I should have. The wrap hangs on a hook in the laundry room and I use it twice a day. That is the whole review.

Here is what it is not. It is not a fix. It is a wrap with gel packs in it, and it does for my knee what an ice bag does, only with both hands free and no dish towel. I still do the exercises the physical therapist showed me, still swim and water walk at the Y twice a week, still take the stairs slower than I did at 40. My doctor and my PT call the shots on all of that. I am telling you what helped me, not what will help you.

The straps are the part that surprised me. Four of them running down the front, so you can pull the top tighter than the bottom if that is where the swelling sits, or ease the whole thing off when you are just sitting. The peas never stayed where I put them. This stays where you put it, and that sounds like a small thing until you have spent a winter chasing a bag of peas around an ottoman.

Having three packs matters more than I expected too. One is on the knee, one is back in the freezer getting hard again, one is spare. Carol runs the rotation and she takes that job seriously. It is machine washable, which I have tested twice after a muddy walk, and it has held up fine. There is a 60 day guarantee on it, though I am about a year past being able to use that.

Where it falls short: the wrap is bulky enough that I do not walk around in it. I wear it sitting down, in the recliner, and that is the whole of it. On a hot evening in July, neoprene against the back of the knee is about as comfortable as it sounds, and I use it less in summer because I need it less. If you are after something to wear under your pants all day at a jobsite, this is not that product and I would not pretend otherwise.

What it replaced is worth saying plainly. Frozen peas, gone. The wrap is on a hook in the laundry room and the gel packs are in the kitchen freezer, and because it is that easy to get to, I actually use it. That is most of the battle with this kind of thing. Anybody can ice a knee twice. Doing it for 14 months straight is the part that counts.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to ask your own doctor or physical therapist first, because I am a retired pipefitter and not a medical man. A knee that is hot and red and swollen is a different conversation than a knee that is stiff before your morning walk. I would tell you that no wrap on the market does the job your exercises do, and that buying gear is not the same as doing the work.

And I would tell you the cheapest thing in your freezer is not doing you a bit of good if you are not pulling it out. The Vive was not free, but I have used it twice a day for 14 months, cold after the walk and warm before it, in a recliner, usually with a Chiefs game on and Tater snoring on the rug. Carol was right about it. I would not say that to her face.