Archives for August 2006

Excuse the pun, but I thought I’d take the chance to shamelessly plug Kaboodle since we just released the biggest update yet to our site. It’s been great to be back in the thick of it after my accident back in Feb. The release has been keeping everyone busy for the last 8 weeks as we’ve feverishly worked on a whole list of new features…the last 2 weeks have been the longest days (and nights) for everyone.

I’ve been busy developing our core technology that is used to automatically extract and summarize web pages for you. It’s the magic behind the ‘Add To Kaboodle‘ button, most of you won’t even notice it I’m sure…but that’s what makes it magic of course. And in this release we use the input from our users as they add pages to Kaboodle to improve the quality of our extraction over time, so it should just keep getting better!

We added some really cool features in this release that I personally love, one is groups. I have created the ‘Give Us A Hand‘ group where I’ve added all my Kaboodles on all things related to living with one hand. It’s an open group so feel free to join if you have something to add, hopefully it’ll be a useful resource for others.

Anyhow, go check it out and if you haven’t signed up already do it now…you owe me!

Kerry gave me a lovely Tag Heuer watch many years back after we got engaged. I wear it all the time and it was on my wrist when I had my accident.

I remember at the clinic I was first taken to in Colombia that they had to take the pin out of the strap to get it off my wrist, my hand was bunched up and they couldn’t get it over it. I remember the skin peeling away as they took the watch off and then forgot about it since I had other, rather pressing, matters to deal with.

It wasn’t until I was in hospital in Miami that it occurred to me to ask Kerry what happened to my watch. Luckily she had picked everything up at the clinic as we left for the main hospital, so at least it wasn’t lost…however I figured it would be pretty fried by the electricity. The surgeons at Miami had commented on how the burn damage was pretty extensive all around the wrist, the theory being that the watch had conducted the electricity and perhaps contributed to the extensive damage (if you plan on flying into power lines please wear a plastic watch!).

Anyhow, Kerry brought the watch into the hospital and to our amazement it was still working. OK, it smelt of burnt skin and there were tiny bits of blackened skin still in the wrist strap, but apart from some tiny melt marks on the casing it seemed fine. That was until the next day when it suddenly stopped…oh, well what do you expect.

When we finally got back to San Francisco we looked at it again and lo and behold it was working. Once I got back home I took the watch in to be cleaned and it came back as good as new, you’d never know what it had been through (shame the same can’t be said of me). All in all it’s a pretty remarkable watch and who knows, maybe the watch was the reason the electric current didn’t stop my heart and kill me – which is what most doctors expect should have happened when I describe the accident to them. Thanks Tag Heuer!

I still haven’t got my prosthetic hand yet, it’s been a challenge for Richard at Hanger to get a test socket to fit. My stump is a bit bulbous, which, as you can imagine, makes it a challenge to get a socket to go over the bulge in the middle yet still fit snuggly to the stump.

It was third time lucky last week though, Richard successfully created a socket that fitted well. Now he will turn this test socket into a real one made from carbon fiber and then I can start experimenting with the hand attachments to see how they work for me, I’m quite excited to finally get to try something out and see what difference it makes.

Richard kindly took some photos of the process of making the test socket. The first one on the left is the initial mould taken from the cast he made of my arm, it’s pretty rough and has to be sanded down and smoothed out before they can make the socket from it. As you can see they just use a normal file to get rid of the imperfections and to reduce the size of the mould by 3-5%…this is where the skill comes in to reduce the size but not to make it too small that the resulting socket won’t fit. In my case, for the third test, Richard didn’t reduce the size of the mould at all, instead, when he took the cast of my arm he shaped the tissue in my arm while it set.

In this next shot you see them heating the plastic sheet ready to make the socket, notice how it’s bowing down. Then they shape the sheet around the mould and finally apply the vacuum to suck all the air out and create the final result.

I’ve been driving again for about the last three months since the accident. To make driving easier we sold our manual Jeep Wrangler and bought a Toyota Prius, which is an automatic (and gets 45+ MPG!). Because I wasn’t sure of the legal situation with me driving again after the accident I wanted to find out if someone is supposed to sign me off as being safe…this was three months back.

So I started of by asking my plastic surgeon if I was safe to drive, he didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t since I had full mobility in both legs and my left shoulder…but he didn’t know who I had to talk to from a legal standpoint.

Next I spoke to my physical therapist, same thing, didn’t see why I couldn’t drive since by then I pretty much had full flexion back in my left elbow…but she didn’t know who, if anyone, I needed to legally talk to.

Given the litigious nature of people here in the US I really wanted to make sure I was legally safe, so my next stop was my insurance company. I figured if I let them know and they didn’t raise an objection then I would be legal, but that wasn’t to be. I phoned CSAAA and spoke to someone and let them know I had a left below elbow (LBE) amputation, she said she was sorry to hear this but as long as I was safe to drive the insurance company didn’t care, since she didn’t even have anywhere to record this information…so I struck out there.

I then contacted a friend I had meet who had an above elbow amputation to see who he had spoken to, unfortunately he couldn’t remember and said he just started driving again.

So, running out of avenues to pursue I phoned the DMV, I figured they must know what I needed to do. The person I spoke to kindly gave me the number for the local Driver Safety Office in Oakland. At last, progress. So I phoned them, they took my details and said I needed to get my Doctor to complete a medical evaluation. I duely printed this and took it to the business office at Kaiser, where it would take 10 working days for them to process and send back to the DMV.

By this time we’d sold the Jeep and took delivery of our new Prius. Since no one had told me I couldn’t drive and I felt quite safe driving with one hand, I started to drive again, commuting about 80 miles a day into work and back.

After about a month I finally heard back from the DMV, who scheduled a telephone call with me to discuss my case. Two weeks later I was on a very formal (and recorded) call with one of the safety officers. They asked about my condition, said the medical evaluation form sent by my doctor didn’t have enough information and then said they’d send me their determination in a month…OK I thought, I guess I’ll just keep driving and wait to hear…ho, ho, ho!

So now three months on I get a letter from the DMV informing me they have suspended my driving privilege! Why? I hear you ask, because they feel I can’t drive safely with one hand…nope. Rather they don’t have enough information to make that determination. So it took them a month to tell me they needed more info and instead of just requesting more info they have suspended me and I have to now request a hearing…which given their track record could take another month to schedule, during which time I can’t drive.

Don’t you just love these people!