Trisha Cummings wrote:
>
> Kyle,
>
> >right-hemi, struggling with pain and spasticity exacerbated by the aging
> >process.

Criminy!  What am I talking about?  I'm a left-hemi!  Must be the DST
change.  I just can't get it together this am...I mean afternoon (see
what I mean?).

>
>     Amber is Right Hemi but more importantly the question is the involvement
> level - How well does your right hand perform?

Well, now that I've corrected myself here, I have to say that my
position is easier than the "right-hemi" because we live in a
right-handed world.

I've adapted pretty well at typing, since I sit at a keyboard all day
long.  I only use the index finger of my left hand and the right hand
takes care of most of the keys from E-D-C right.

This used to piss off my parents (and now my MDs), but I really learned
to adapt the right hand to fluidly handle most major tasks.  Believe it
or not, I'm not a half-bad piano player (I play in a part-time blues
band) and I cover most of the melody and chording with the right hand.
The left normally follows the bass line (again, usually just the index
finger of my left hand).
Okay, Trisha.  Elizabeth and all the others out there in O.T. and P.T.
land are going to flame me, but all the stretching in the world never
did a whole lot for my fine motor skills.  In fact, as I age, my wife
Laura has noticed that I'm regressing more and more to that
"lobster-claw" position with my left hand, especially when I'm tired or
concentrating on a task that doesn't need the hand--and I still strech
every day.  Through the years I've become pretty adept at doing tasks
one-handed that normally require two.  Example:  When I wear long-sleeve
shirts it's hard for me to button the cuff on the right arm, so I'll
button it up before I put my arm in and then wriggle my hand through.
Usually I open cans without a problem, but when I'm spasm-ing up I'll
use one of the old style "knife" openers that only takes one hand.

A lot of it, in my case, boils down to thinking the problem through and
then figuring out a way around it.  At first, you think it's going to
take forever (like the sleeve thing), but after you practice for a while
things become second nature.

Check out some of the adaptive technology web-sites for amputees.  There
are some pretty neat devices for the single-handed out there.

Amber might not like this one at all, but it helped me quite a bit when
I was a kid (12 or so):  My dad would strap my good hand to my chest
with adhesive tape and have me do a different task every day with the
spastic hand.  Some days it was eating (yeah, it was a mess, but who
cared?), other days it was really challenging stuff like changing the
spark plug in the lawnmower (That one took about four hours.  I hollered
and pissed and moaned, but I finally did it.  He was so proud!).  I was
much less spastic then, but it kept me going for a few years at least.

Many cultures regard the left hand as unclean because that's the hand
they use to clean themselves after using the toilet.  You can understand
why, I guess, they would be reticent to use the same hand for eating.

Hope this helped.

-Kyle