On Life with One Hand by Keiron McCammon
Halloween has arrived and it’s time to party. Figured I should make the most of what I’ve got, so this year a pirate I be.
Kerry and I had three opportunities this year to don our costumes and my hook made for a great…ah, well hook, for my pirates outfit. Probably the one day of the year that it doesn’t look out-of-place. In fact most people failed to realise that it was indeed real!
I’ve been taking Goji juice twice a day since about June to aid in my recovery. It was something Kerry was introduced to by people she works with. She ended up signing up as a “Marketing Exec” with Free Life, the makers of Goji, and has been selling a little of it at her massage practice…although I think the two of us consume way more than she sells.
Anyway, the idea behind it is the molecules in the Goji berry “serve as directors and carriers
of the instructions that cells use to communicate with each other and aid in the smooth functioning of virtually every cell in the entire body“.
Whilst it’s hard to isolate the effect of Goji per se, (since I also switched to a vegetarian diet during this time), my recovery has been pretty fast. My skin grafts have healed well (scroll down to earlier posts for the before shots) and my overall health and vitality has definitely improved. I use to have quite dark rings under my eyes, nowadays you’d be hard pressed to see them, and my skin tended to be greasy and now it’s much clearer with a better overall tone.
Kerry has even been shipping some back to the UK for her mum who’s been having a few health challenges recently, hopefully if will help her also. If you’re interested, try some yourself – you can sign up via Kerry’s homepage (only if you’re in the US, UK shipping next year).
My guitar attachment from TRS arrived this week, so on Thursday I went and bought a left-handed guitar. Now I can start to learn to play all over again. It took me six years to get to the point where I could play a tune last time, hopefully it won’t take quite so long this time around.
Definitely feels strange to be making chords with my right hand, I have to imagine a mirror image of how I would normally make the chords with my other hand…which really threw me at first. When I was trying out the guitar in the shop I couldn’t understand why it sounded so bad, must be the guitar I thought. Then the guy in the shop asked what cord I was trying to make and pointed out my fingers were doing a back-to-front ‘C’!
Strumming is going to take some practice too, it’s a whole arm motion from the elbow now, rather than a wrist action. It’s tricky getting a smooth strum across all the strings, both down and up. I’m sure with practice I’ll finesse it, but, for the moment it doesn’t sound to good to say the least. Poor Kerry’s going to have to live through me murdering the guitar yet again.
The attachment from TRS is pretty cool, the pick is held in place with a couple of screws and the head of the attachment swivels as does the arm holding the pick, so I can position it however I want.
I restart my lessons again next week with Troy, whose been my guitar teacher for the last 4+ years. I’m looking forward to playing again, it’ll probably take a couple of years to get back to anything like I was, an opportunity to focus more on the theory this time around.
Now I have my prosthesis I can start to experiment a bit…no, not that kind of experimentation…my latest adventure is yoga (see photo opposite of my “downward facing dog”). Kerry and I had started going to yoga classes at our local gym in Danville last year and I had wondered if I’d be able to do it again. I really need to do something to get back in shape.
So the guys at Hanger ordered me a “Super Sport” attachment for my arm from TRS (they specialise in different attachments for upper limb amputees). This “hand” allows me to put full weight on my left arm – as you can see in the photo. I strip down my prosthesis, taking all the cables off and plug-in my flexi-hand and I’m good to go.
I’ve been a couple of times now and although I’m stiff as a board and completely unfit (you should have seen me sweating), I can do most things I used to (although haven’t tried a handstand yet). The one struggle I have is I can’t quite bend my left elbow all the way into a press up position since my socket digs in to my arm too much, I’ll have to see if it can be cut back a bit to give me more range of motion.