My left hand

My new wheels

I have been keeping a journal since coming home from the hospital after brain surgery. I’m posting some of it today for any BITS readers curious about how I’m getting along.

Monday, 2/17/14. I’ve been wanting to write about my left hand and arm, which have been affected by this tumor. The numbness in them was the sign to me that I was developing some kind of neuro-problem. The neurosurgeons seemed disappointed when I told them afterward that I had not regained full use of them. Apparently, that had been on their wish list. Maybe mine, too, but I have been careful not to seem ungrateful that my left side has not deserted me completely. I still have use of my left leg and the ability to walk short distances without a roller-walker.

Bedside basics

But the numbness of my arm and hand are a mostly constant reminder that for a time, that part of my physical being is experiencing a kind of “brown out.” I wake in the morning with a heaviness that extends from my shoulder to my fingertips, and only thumb and index finger seem functional, though not with great reliability. I massage my left hand and wrist with my right, and something like feeling returns for a while.

Throughout the day, however, simple movements produce a frustrating comedy of unrealized expectations. Pulling on a tee shirt or sweatshirt is usually a challenge, the memory of how to do it colliding with the impediments. What was once an automatic function now requires my full attention, as I relearn the process, breaking it down into steps.

And most of all not losing patience as (once again) the shirt balls up into a twisted lump, half on and half off. Laughter may or may not be the best medicine. In the past, anyway, my chances of putting on a tee shirt backwards were 50-50. Now the odds are 80-20, and what else can I do but laugh when I discover I’ve done it again.

The dreaded Sunday Times

Other struggles include reading a newspaper, which is reduced almost instantly into a fight of flailing arms and wild sheets of newsprint acting like a gale has suddenly sprung up in the room. Magazines offer their own challenge: the slick pages will not separate easily. So (a) thumbing through the New Yorker back to front for the cartoons is an impossibility, and (b) leafing from one page to another, especially searching for something I know is there, yields limited results. 

Holding a book open in two hands and turning pages gets complicated, too. The book keeps flopping shut or away from me. Spiral-bound, I think, would be perfect. But thank digital technology for the next best thing: my kindle and nook. In my fumbling hands, they are often jumping a page ahead or back, but I can deal with that.

Shoe laces

Otherwise, I am still a way off from (a) tying my shoes, (b) buttoning Levi’s, (c) flossing teeth, and (d) using a knife and fork at the same time. But there are work-arounds for most of these, and I do not dwell on the big-ticket items: (a) driving a car again, (b) doing a share of the cooking, (c) taking long walks in the desert, (d) travel, and (e) typing with both hands.

Meanwhile, my left arm remains this strangely willful appendage that needs supervision like a restless child ready to wander off at any moment. A simple intention to make a long-familiar movement typically goes unheeded. My arm or hand gets trapped or hung up or fails an easy task like pulling up my underwear. My right hand, impatient with this foolery has come to be an irritable twin brother, reaching over sometimes to take my left and offer some awkward solace, sometimes just holding on as if it might fly away. And for the moment, hands held over heart, I briefly feel knit together again.

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Previously: Almost back in the saddle

Coming up: Dane Coolidge, The Texican (1911)