Bike crash

Some weeks ago my wife, Annie, and our friend Vicki dropped me and my bike off in Blyn, WA. Then they drove 27 miles to Port Angeles, where we were to meet up again for lunch. I had a lovely ride until mile 19, when I came to a steep uphill segment. I lost momentum, went off the path onto the gravel, flipped the bike, and crashed in a heap. A bit dazed, I found it comforting just to lie, spreadeagled, on the warm asphalt path. Then, while cataloging all the places I had pain, it occurred to me that at any moment another bike might come screaming down the hill. So I struggled to my feet, retrieved my bike, and dragged it off to the side. Although I hurt in numerous locations, the only visible injury was the middle finger of my right hand. It was copiously dripping bright blood which, abstractly, I found quite beautiful. I struggled to open my drinking bottle with my left hand, and feebly poured water over the finger. Neither the embedded dirt nor the accumulating clot budged.

With no better plan, I walked my bike up the rest of the hill and when the path flattened out resumed my ride. A little breadcrumb trail of blood followed me for the first few miles, but by the time I arrived in Port Angeles my clotting cascade had fully kicked in. However, squeezing the right brake continued to be a challenge. It sure was good to see Annie, and have her tenderly bind my wound.

The back of my hand became quite swollen. At urgent care the next day I saw a physician’s assistant, who ordered an x-ray. She knew I was a doctor, so showed it to me. “Well, I don’t see a fracture,” she said, “what about you?” I concurred with her assessment, which was fortunately corroborated by a real radiologist.

After carelessly using my hand for the next three weeks it suddenly dawned on me that neither the swelling nor the pain were remitting. Thus, I decided I ought to see a hand surgeon–duh! Almost instantly he diagnosed a fistful of severely torn ligaments, and put my hand in a splint, where it lives to this day. As you can see from the photo, the splint is hard black plastic which attaches to my hand with a series of Velcro straps–I call it my “hoof”. Most of the time I also wear a compression glove under the hoof (I call it my Michael Jackson glove) to help keep the swelling at bay.

Well, that’s the back story. In this piece I’ll not go on about how amazing and wonderful it is to have a body with all parts working. And how grateful those of us who usually function at full capacity should be for what we have, And how we tend to take our wonderful capabilities for granted. All of these things are incontrovertibly true, but that ground has been well-plowed, and I have no furrows to add. Instead, what I’ll do is talk about the surprising discoveries I’ve made in my current state. But first I’d like to acknowledge how lucky I feel–it could have been so much worse. My head is intact, and I broke neither bones nor glasses. Even my bike, though a little scratched up, was still perfectly rideable for the post-crash journey.

With my dominant hand tethered by the hoof, everything has changed. During the first 24-hour cycle, I encountered many unexpected challenges to my automatic daily routine. Perhaps for the first time since I was a tyke learning to tie my shoes, I was conscious of how quotidian activities are actually performed. In particular, I became aware of the profound difference between tasks that require one hand and those requiring two.

I improvised a slew of workarounds. Typing this blog post is a good example—I’m supplementing my good left hand with the protruding middle finger of my hoof-bound right, in a modified hunt-and-peck routine. And manipulating the mouse with my left hand turns out to be very disorienting, like driving on the left side of the road. When I make coffee I now push the AeroPress plunger down with my right forearm instead of my hand. To extract toothpaste I bite the knurled cap with my teeth, then turn the tube clockwise with my left hand. And like teeth brushing, eating is now done entirely as a lefty–I’m in the painful process of learning how to convey soup to mouth with minimal spillage. Who knew that the non-dominant hand was so ineffectual at such mundane tasks?

Things that require two hands sit somewhere between extremely challenging and impossible. Unbuttoning my shirt and then hanging it up on a hanger is a major undertaking with an uncertain outcome, as is buttering toast, opening a letter, and yes, tying shoes. I’ve learned it best to seek help from sweet Annie to perform almost all such undertakings.

And here’s a selection of things that I simply won’t be able to do again until my ligaments weave back together: removing the cork from a bottle of wine, kneading bread dough, cutting a slice of bread, opening a child-proof pill bottle, and driving my manual transmission truck.

While out and about there are additional challenges. Signing my name for a credit card purchase is completely impossible—I simply ask the person on the other side of the counter to forge my signature. I sheepishly ask the librarian to put my books in my back pack. And when I shop for bulk food at the grocery store I flash my hoof and plaintively ask an employee to bag and label two pounds of rye flour. Despite the awkwardness of asking for help with such trivial tasks, people are understanding and gracious.

Recently, while going through security on our first flight since covid, I realized I had some coins in my right pants pocket. So I reached around with my left hand to try and extract and transfer them to one of those white plastic TSA bowls. A sweet young woman behind me saw my hoofed hand and that I was struggling, and asked if she could be of help. But when she realized I was digging deep into my pocket she said, “Oh! Maybe it would be better if I didn’t help.” We both got a good laugh out of that.

After learning how to do two-handed things in a one-handed way, or right-handed things in a left-handed way, my newfound skills quickly become incorporated into my daily routine. But from time to time, the need to perform a new activity pops up and I have to think through how to manage it. Or realize I can’t. For example, a few days ago I was drinking a cup of coffee (with my left hand, of course) when the phone rang. I put down the coffee and picked up the phone and held it to my left ear (the speaker phone function doesn’t work). Then, slightly distracted by the conversation, I reached for the cup with my right hand and almost knocked it over with my hoof. So I started to switch the phone to my right hand so I could pick up the coffee with my good hand, but quickly realized the folly of that. I was stumped, and sadly watched the coffee getting colder and colder as the caller droned on.

One thing that’s been hard to incorporate into my routine is my new dependence on Annie. It’s been difficult to ask her to do things that I never would have thought to ask her—cut a slice of bread, butter my toast, tie my shoes. And she’s had to take over most of the chores that I’ve always done, from burying the compost to taking out the trash to walking the dog. Though she does these and many other tasks quite cheerfully, it’s hard not to feel both diminished and guilty. Then I think of how many couples have an even more unbalanced division of labor—the husband who takes care of his wife after her car accident; the wife who has do to virtually everything for her husband immobilized by a stroke; the spouse dying of cancer.

Finally, I think of the profound difference between a temporary and a permanent disability. Though I’m a bit dubious, the hand surgeon says I should eventually regain almost all of the function of my hand. Thus all these adjustments will hopefully be temporary. And I’ll be able to revert to the old normal. Were my disability to be permanent (“your hand could end up like a pancake flipper,” as my physical therapist threateningly and inelegantly put it), all sorts of changes would need to be made. For example, I might have to look into a specialized keyboard to optimize my unbalanced typing, find some sort of contraption to hold a phone or a cup of coffee in my bad hand, and sell my beloved truck. And establish a new identity as an officially “disabled person.” Hopefully, it won’t come to that.