At Last, I Can Hang With Bob Dole and Rick Allen
What do I have in common now with former Presidential candidate Bob Dole and Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen? I’ve only got one good arm. Luckily for me though, it’s a temporary situation. On Saturday morning I fell down the stairs in my house and broke 2 bones in my left hand (the 3rd and 4th metacarpals - the bones that run down from the two middle fingers to the base of the hand). I came down hard on the side of my hand, and at first thought I’d dislocated my fingers, so I popped them back into place. And yes - just like you saw in Lethal Weapon when Riggs dislocated and then re-located his shoulder - it really, really hurt (but I don’t think I carried it off with quite the same tough guy stoicism of Mel Gibson 
). The emergency room doctor later explained to me (after seeing the x-rays), that I didn’t dislocate my fingers - when I thought I was popping them back in, I was actually setting the broken bones back in place.
I’m hoping to see a doctor today or tomorrow for a cast - right now I’m still in a “temporary” splint from the emergency room. The problem with getting hurt on a Saturday morning is that it’s hard to reach a regular doctor over the weekend to schedule a follow-up visit. The upside of getting hurt on a Saturday morning is that the emergency room is empty, so there’s no wait - Philadelphia’s Friday night violent crime victims are all patched up, and the Saturday afternoon sporting and home improvement injuries haven’t started flowing in yet.
Unfortunately, this actually affects Maria even more than me. I can’t wash dishes, I can’t get Eidan in his car seat, I can’t open a jar, and so on. She has an incredibly busy schedule right now, so we’ve been scrambling to rearrange our division of labor with the boys and around the house, to try finding a reasonable balance between one handed vs. two handed activities. So far it’s been a challenge, but I think we’ll be able to find a new balance.
The interesting part is sorting out my handedness. I’m not quite ambidextrous - some things I do equally well with either hand (swinging a baseball bat, eating) but for most things I’m only good with one hand. Which one varies depending on the task (writing with my left, throwing a ball with my right). It’s proving to be kind of random which tasks I’m adapting to easily with my right hand and which I’m not: learning to shave with my right hand has been no problem, but brushing my teeth has been awkward. I guess it’s a sign of the times that I’m actually glad I lost the use of my writing hand and not the hand I use with the mouse.
I’ll try to keep blogging, but I may go with an emphasis on photos for a while. One handed typing was a novelty for about 3 minutes - it gets old fast .
