понедельник, 17 сентября 2012 г.

COMMENTARY; THE HAND LEFT CAN'T COPE RIGHT - Dayton Daily News (Dayton, OH)

The soup was in the spoon. I raised the spoon toward my mouth. Asit approached its target, my hand began to shake, soup began to breakover the edge and drop onto the table, but I rushed my mouthspoonward in time to slurp up darn near half of what had been in thespoon to start with.

Success. Success, indeed. Because the soup spoon had been in myleft hand.

That may not sound impressive. OK, it may sound downrightpathetic. But after a lifetime being called on only to catch abaseball or use a piece of bread to push food toward a fork, my lefthand's a tad out of shape.

It was called off the 57-year Disabled List because I finallycaved in this year to the fact I'm never going to make it into themajor leagues and decided I'd have to get by with just imitating realmajor leaguers as much as possible. Unfortunately, the company healthplan is too chintzy to cover illegal steroids, so I had to settle forthe next best thing and have rotator cuff surgery.

The doctor told me there'd be a long post-op recuperation for myright shoulder, but I didn't consider that what I'd really need isintense pre-op therapy for my hitherto useless south paw. I didpractice a few key skills beforehand - pulling up pants, gettingOreos to mouth, zapping through channels on the remote.

But reality of my right arm in a sling differed from practice.Getting pants buttoned was a killer. 'Wear loose clothing,' advisedathletic trainer Jerry Whetstone, after consulting with others at theKettering Sports Medicine Center.

Easy for him to say. The same intense effort went into trying tobutton every pair of pants I own, which I figure must be the resultof massive post-operative swelling . Whetstone advised sweatpants,but I don't have any - and Ma Nature's decision to give February anencore prevented going with elastic-waist shorts.

'Most of our clients have someone at home who can help them buttonpants,' Whetstone said. OK. If I were to ask for such help at home,and then responded to the initial look of 'Yeah, right' with, 'Fine,I'll just go to the restaurant with you with my pants around myknees,' I might get some help. But, 'Hi, there. Say, would you mindhelping me zip up and button my pants?' just doesn't go over well inthe men's room at work.

Actual work isn't a big problem. It takes a bit longer to hunt andpeck with one finger instead of the usual two, but I can't write downany quotes or data, so I pretend I'm with the New York Times or USAToday and just make all that stuff up, which is a big time saver.

The crusher is food. The pros suggested finger food, which I'dfigured out, but, for example, there was a finger-food shortage atthe Japanese restaurant where we had a traditional Easter dinner, andI ended up sloshing stuff all over - for some reason, the left paw,not normally given to tremors, gets the shakes when wielding a spoonor fork mouthward. No wonder the Romans called it 'sinister.'

The therapists suggested wearing a one-pound wrist weight tostabilize the hand. Lacking a weight, they suggested the coinequivalent, 150 pennies.

I was a little hard pressed to figure out how a hand that can'thold soup would balance 150 pennies, but I could see the advantage -if you're eating out, you could just leave your weight therapy stackfor a tip.

Unless, of course, you ever want to eat at that place again.