After I broke my ankle and it was put back together with screws the incisions healed up enough after about 10 days that the doc had removed the cast and had me alternate between ice water and as hot as I could stand hot water soaks. 5 minutes in each and I had to keep the hot water hot. After a few days of that the swelling was dramatically reduced. When I twist my ankle or wrist I use that to this day.
One day my husband walked trhough the front door with blood dripping down his face. He had just walked a mile home from the street where he was hit by a car in both legs, slid up to the windshield where he banged his head and broke the window. He said they wanted to take him to the hospital, but he said: “I don’t want to sit 3 or 4 hours in an emergency room waiting for care, I’ll do better at home.”
I spent 1/2 hour with tweezers picking about 50 shards of glass out of his forehead. Then I put him to bed with his head elevated and cold compresses to reduce risk of concussion. He had bruising on the sides of both lower and upper legs. I put bags of frozen peas or corn (don’t remember which as this was 40 years ago) on the 2 worst bruises and cold compresses on the rest as I only had two bags of veggies. The next day the two less bruised areas that did not have the frozen veggies looked much worse than the veggie treated areas.