He puts the squeeze on getting plastered.

• Author: Bartlett, Marie
• Position: PEOPLE - Roy Archambault

For every five surgeries Roy Archambault performed as a podiatrist, one person eventually would get a cast or bandage wet. He would have to redo the cast or put on a new bandage. "It just seemed like I was being paged a lot. And it almost always seemed like it was when I was getting ready to sit down for dinner."

He rigged a latex cover with a tube to suck out air, creating a waterproof seal that allowed the wearer to wallow in water without worry. He gave them to his patients.

He quit practicing 10 years ago, but Archambault, 51, still is trying to keep people from getting their wounds wet. His company, Wilmington-based Xero Products LLC, sells the XeroSox, a latex sleeve that fits over a cast or bandage. A hand pump removes the air.

This year, Xero introduced a prosthetic-limb cover and a sleeve that fits over a catheter in a person's arm. It soon will market a device that uses a pump, a tube and a puff of cold air or talcum powder to soothe itches underneath a cast.

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A Springfield, Mass., native, he earned a bachelor's in chemistry and zoology from the University of Massachusetts in 1976. He enrolled in 1977 at the New York College of Podiatric Medicine in Manhattan. He needed a job with a flexible schedule to help pay expenses, so he started making T-shirts. One design, he says, sold 100,000. It read: "I rode a New York subway and survived."

He settled into a private practice in Pasadena, Md., in 1984. "I loved it so much that I got totally immersed in it." So immersed, his days sometimes would last 21 hours, and he was spending less time with his family. They moved to Wilmington in 1993.

He still practiced...