Each of the five pieces in this miniseries, leading up to this one, has considered a different subset of adaptive design problems for people dealing with one working hand, like I was in the wake of a serious accident. We’ve covered various solutions I researched, evaluated, and adopted along the way; some of which I found, others I adapted, and still others I created. Each article is different in its focus, but in addition to being centered on design, they all have something in common: in each case, it’s me at the center of the saga – the single-handed, would-be hero of my own story. But that’s not the whole story, hence this final piece, which spotlights other hand-lending problem solvers around me.
While I owe a great deal of thanks all around, that’s not the point of this segment. The intent here is to underscore the importance of outside design perspective in the wake of a long-haul injury. Because, while some issues will be self-evident, others may be more easily spotted by other people – with either a professional interest or a personal stake in your recovery. Some design solutions shared with you will be ends in themselves, while others will also change your point view in helpful ways, highlighting problems and point toward solutions you may have otherwise overlooked entirely.
Left to Write: When Good is Good Enough
My penmanship was never much to write home about, but with my dominant right hand out of the picture, I was left with a truly illegible scrawl (as shown above, next to Rosie). You might wonder why that would matter in the digital age, but I’m old enough that I still leave physical notes for myself. Indeed, amidst the commingled fogs of new pains and medications, tangible reminders became even more vital.
And so, one of my occupational therapists introduced me to accessible writing tools for motor-impaired people, including assistive pencil grips and rocket ship-shaped pens. But when I asked her how to actually write letters left-handed; she offered a practical reply that stuck with me: “the best way to do it is whatever way works best for you.” I understood it as a kind of pragmatic rebuttal to the notion that “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” Facing physical rehabilitation on myriad fronts, everything becomes a matter of relative prioritization. And in this case (even halfway) good was good enough.
From there, I cast about for other things that would fill other needs in my desk drawers. I discovered that there are actually left-handed spiral notebooks, which have a handy gap between a pair of shorter top and bottom spirals for resting your wrist. I promptly bought myself one of those, plus multiple pairs of left-handed scissors, and eventually some more conventional-looking pens designed for lefties. Even now, my left hand is anything but adept at writing, but that’s fine – my time has been better spent on other facets of my recovery.
Getting Grips: One Thing Leads to Another
Toward the end of a physical therapy appointment, my physiotherapist handed me a flat square of something called Dycem. She explained that you could set it down on a surface and use it as a source of frictional resistance, helping to hold the base of a jar while you unscrew the lid. The non-slip square could also easily be lifted back up, washed, moved, and reused indefinitely. The material science of it seemed neat, to be sure, but I set it aside for lack of immediate need.
Weeks later, my hand therapist separately mentioned the same material – but this time, she gave me more ideas for how it could be useful. With two working hands, for example, you may not notice it, but sometimes you use one hand to keep a dish from sliding around while you eat with the other. With that in mind, I set out the square on my dining table, and soon, as sometimes happens with a new tool in our midst, I started finding new uses for it as well. Ultimately, I ended up buying an entire roll of the stuff. But having this material at hand also got me thinking about other household projects that had grown challenging without the use of both hands.
Friction is a helpful force for holding things on a flat surface, but some gripping problems require an additional dimension. So I bought a mini bench vice, which I clamped to the kitchen counter (next to my role of Dycem!). I suspect the benefits are largely self-evident, but I use it for things like holding a screwdriver in place when I need to swap out a recalcitrant bit. The vice also has a handy pair of rubber bumpers for more delicate operations, like bending metal glass frames back into place. In any case, even though I technically arrived at the idea to get this device myself, something given to me by someone else pointed me in the right direction.
Handled with Care: Adaptive Surprise Inside
Medical professionals have helped me solve a lot of design problems, but friends, family, and other people close to me have contributed a great deal as well. My partner in particular has put a lot of thought into assistive designs, including (but not limited to) a remarkably thoughtful gift she got for me over the holidays. Even before getting to the adaptive object inside, I found she had custom-wrapped the package using a crafty technique allowing it to be opened using just one hand.
You’ve almost certainly encountered some form of tear strip, pull tab, or ripcord opening before – although likely in a more utilitarian context. This kind of packaging allows a person to open an envelope or box without wrangling with scissors or tangling with tape. My partner applied the same principle design idea to my package, using festive string and minimalist wrapping paper.
Impressively, it worked exactly as intended – I held a paper tab tethered to the visible end of a string, the rest of which ran underneath the paper; as I pulled, the string unwound around all four sides of the box, cutting a continuous line. Thought and personal care that went into the execution of this single-use design.
That outer handmade gift gave way to an adaptive product inside. Like the wrapping, this item was operable with one hand. The aptly named BopTop is a brand of stackable storage containers designed to be opened and closed by, well, bopping the top. Pressing the large button to close the container sucks out the air and creates a powerful seal, making it handy for storing dry goods (and helpful for someone still fumbling about as they navigate the world with a non-dominant hand).
My partner had seen me struggle to reseal opened boxes and bags with stuff like muesli inside. The problem was right in front of me, but it took someone else seeing my frustrations to realize the benefits of being able to decant contents into a much more user-friendly container. Needless, to say, I have since bought a bunch of additional BopTop containers of various sizes.
Clax On, Clax Off: Modular Flat-Pack Cart
While it may seem a bit much to praise another gift from my partner, I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t show off the flat-pack Clax cart she got for me. Between my condo above, my mailroom below, and my car parked in a garage at the far end of a long tunnel, carting stuff was already frustrating enough when I had two working hands.
First, the feature that sits most squarely with the subject of this series: the Clax can be folded flat with one hand at the push of a button, making it easy to lift into and out of a vehicle. It also has a foot break, built-in bungee cords, collapsible add-on crates, and more. I use it for grocery shopping, shuttling packages, carrying luggage, the list goes on. And the sheer amount I can pack onto it … well, see for yourself!
A friend and neighbor of mine, who also happens to be a 99pi fan (Hi George!), owns one of these Clax carts as well (in black). Among other things, he has used his cart to bring up heavy and unwieldy packages for me from our mailroom, to set them outside my front door (Thanks, George!). That might seem a digression, but it actually brings us full circle to the importance of people around us after a major injury – a friend spotted my arm in a sling and took the initiative to lend a hand.
Crane Games: Keep on Reaching for the Prize
Before we wrap, there’s something else I’ve gotten from people around me – you know, in addition to helpful tools, creative gifts, awesome carts, helping hands, ongoing encouragement, and the occasional compliment on one of my cooler orthoses. Now that I write all of that out, that’s already quite a lot … but I’m thinking of something else: reminders that I’m making progress. Because that’s another thing that can be hard to keep in perspective.
Progress has felt slow, but when I see friends and family, they’re quick to notice improvements. After the first few months, I would show my nieces how I could at least sort of hold up my hand – though it just kind of hovered and wobbled, like a puppet limb with hidden wires controlling it from above. I told them I was in my “Geppetto Era.”
My arm still struggles to lift itself, let alone anything else, and my hand lacks fine motor control. But they are starting to work in concert, even picking some things up. It feels kinda like one of those mechanical arms in claw machines at arcades; you know, the ones that only rarely grab the prize you want (if any at all). Maybe this is my “Claw Game Era.”
That might sound less than awesome, but it’s many leaps and a bunch of bounds beyond what I could do in early months, when my arm was hanging limply at my side, its weight pulling painfully on my shoulder socket, all while its internal mechanisms slowly atrophied. In just the past few months, some muscles that my doctors had told me would likely never work again have slowly shown signs of movement.
It’s been a year now and while I continue to improve (for now) my prognosis remains uncertain. Meanwhile, I’m still using virtually all of the adaptive designs I have employed along the way. So it’s safe to say that the thought and effort put forward on those fronts by myself and others has paid off. And I will consider that work all the more rewarding if the act of writing this all out helps others as well.
Well, Folks: That’s a Wrap (at Present)
This has been by far the most intensive (and extensive) writing I’ve done since losing the ability to type with two hands, so I hope you’ll forgive any grammatical errors, overzealous prose, cringey wordplays, and of course run-on sentences … you know, like this one. Meanwhile, this mini-series may be done, but there’s a lot more yet to come …
Adapt or Design — A Project of 99% Invisible
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