A Sling Shot

I'm making it my personal quest to make the titles, for all the entries with this tag, to have punny names. I've heard plenty over the last few days.

The sling's still on, but the fresh bandages are less bulky and therefore hurt less. I'm also starting to get adept with using my left hand - it hardly shakes during pipetting anymore. And my left-handed writing is improving... slowly.

So far it's been an interesting experience (but then again, I anticipated that it would be, hence the blog entries with this theme). Having essentially only one arm to do all the work means that I have to think differently about what I'm about to do, and sometimes plan ahead a little. I might even keep using some of the techniques I originally developed to help deal with my situation, especially if they free up my right hand for other things.

I've had various people come up to me, saying they'd never had the patience to work with one hand, could never manage, etc. I think if they ever had to, they would. Humans are an incredibly adaptable species, paradoxically with a strong aversion to change. And one can get used to almost anything, however inconvenient.

Nevertheless, my co-supervisor has reached a higher level than I have. He tells me he injured his right shoulder in an accident once, and had to keep the arm in a sling. Since he was not very good with his left hand, he used the injured hand, sling and all, to do his lab-work.

Hardcore.

Dressed to Impress

Tomorrow the long weekend ends, and with it my lack of access to medical facilities. The sling might come off tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

It's a funny thing - the only reason I needed a sling was to keep my arm elevated, to reduce the bleeding. But walking around with a sling, people tended to assume the worst (i.e. my arm was broken). It would be a fair feat to break an arm with a mandoline while slicing onions...I think a sling is such a visible dressing, usually associated with major arm injuries, that it instantly catches attention, drawing gasps and concerned inquiries as to what happened..

Except from my supervisor, who seemed entertained by the whole thing, although he tried to put on a sympathetic face.

In any case, I will be glad to have that thing off. Impressive appearance notwithstanding, my arm was getting cramped, being perpetually bent while held up by the sling. I suppose that would not be a concern for someone who had actually broken their arm.

In the meantime, I can go around bragging about my ability to carry out a PCR with one arm tied behind my back - or down my front, as the case may be.

Write Hand Rule

For a - northpaw, I suppose the term would be - being forced to use one's left hand, and only the left hand, has been something of a revelation. Having my handwriting revert to that of my one year old's self was just the start.

For example, do you notice that you usually hold on to an object when writing on it, to keep it steady? I noticed only when I couldn't do it anymore. I had to write lightly to prevent the paper from shifting with the pen's movements. Anchoring it with heavy object only helped a little, so long as the pen moved away from the point where the paper was held down.

But it was labelling small, smooth-surfaced objects, like the ubiquitous Eppendorf tube, where the real problems appeared. At the moment, I tape them down to a vertical surface to keep them still, while I label them laboriously with my left hand, breath held to minimise the shaking of my wrist. But one-handed wrestling with sticky tape brings another set of issues. And no matter how stable the surface, my handwriting remains at the mercy of my poorly-trained left hand.

I've taken to typing up my lab notebook entries - the notebook is meant for future researchers as well as evidence in patent claims, and I hardly think illegible text would facilitate that. But one-handed typing is tiresome in its own right.

This entry, for example. It's hardly long, but already my left shoulder cramps with the effort of covering the entire keyboard on its own.

Take care.

The One-Armed Scientist

I am a predominantly right-handed person. Owing to various theories that left-handeds are more "creative", among other things, I have made some half-hearted attempts to be ambidextrous. As the short instances of truly horrible handwriting in my Social Studies textbook (boring, and therefore ideal for practice) can attest to, these attempts were largely met with failure.

On the morning of Friday, 23 April 2010, at 11:20 am as described on the incident report, I managed, through a combination of stupidity, carelessness and a V-Slicer, to lose a 5mm-thick chunk of my right thumb. The cleaness of the slice left no material to suture, and so the medical staff who attended to me were rather at a loss as to how to stem the profuse bleeding. A combination of applied pressure, elevation, and an ice pack slowed the blood loss, after which they wrapped the wound in absorbant padding and compressive bandages, a dressing which would hopefully last the long Anzac Day weekend until the medical centre would be open once more. I was released with a well-bandaged thumb, a sling to keep the wound elevated, and an injunction not to get the dressing wet under any circumstances.

The enormity of the situation was readily apparent to me. I had lost the use of my right thumb for an unspecified amount of time - the nature of the wound meant it would take some time to heal - and, by extension, any activities which required the use of a right hand and an opposable thumb. I couldn't write, I couldn't use a knife and a fork at once, getting money out of my wallet was going to be a challenge, cutting something with scissors was clumsy and dangerous. Furthermore, I would once again have to take a break from the lab until I had the use of my pipetting hand once again. It seemed that my PhD would, once again, see a delay.

Or would it?

Humans have an incredible ability to adapt to adversity. I had long held that disability was never an excuse for self-entitlement, there was always a way to survive without expecting too many allowances from others. This was the test.

I strode into the lab. With one hand I pulled on one sleeve, and grabbed the other end of it so it covered the front of my body, sling inclusive, leaving the right sleeve hanging free. I couldn't quite twist around to align the button at the back of the labcoat collar with its buttonhole, so a friend stepped in and did it up for me, and also knotted the ties around the waist. I got a box of gloves a size larger than what I was accustomed to using, and with a bit of twisting and pulling, managed to get it on.

"She's a one-armed scientist!" someone remarked in amusement.

It has begun.

Appreciation

You know what is the most rare and precious thing in the world? It's the smile from someone who hardly ever smiles. It's warm and happy and genuine, it's nothing like the polite upturn of the mouth used by everyone else for everything, and it's all the more beautiful because you might never see it again and you're left scrambling, wondering what you did that you might do again, just to see that smile one more time. It's something you want to hug away in your memory forever, because the feeling it inspires is like nothing on earth.

See, this is why the cold, antisocial types are so popular with the lady-folk. Being one of the lady-folk myself, I can sympathise.

I haven't mentioned it here previously, but for the past three weeks I've been sick - first with a terrible sore throat, and subsequently with a persistent cough which has not resolved as of yet. It is primarily the cough which has exiled me, from the lab where I do my research and thus, from all the friends close enough to meet in person. It has been a horrible experience.

I used to think I was antisocial, able to sustain myself on a minimal of human contact. But these weeks have shown otherwise. I need that social contact, not as a momentary pleasure but as a critical requirement for maintaining my mental equilibrium. I need to see people, talk to them, know that they miss me as much as I miss them. It's been a frightening, frightening revelation.

Those throwaway well-wishes, tacked onto the end of the few messages I received while trapped at home - "Hope you're feeling better" - they should not have been like a cooling drink after a long trek through a desert. I should not have been as thirsty as I was. There shouldn't have been a desert.

I am far more human that I thought I was, and it terrifies me.

Monolith Action Figure

I'm just about 100% positive that this is an April Fool's joke. (The "Availability: Europa" was a bit of a giveaway.) But dammit, I want one!

The canned unicorn meat, on the other hand, is just gross.

I also like Goog- I mean, Topeka's new Translate for Animals application. I think it would be very useful. Finally, I can find out what it means when a cat says, "Meow".

Also, xkcd is awesome, but we always knew that.

TEXTp is rather nauseating - don't watch for too long!

Wikipedia is brilliant - it all sounds subtly wrong, somehow, but everything there is literally, factually correct!

All in all, I have to say April the First is one of my favourite times of the year. Sure, anyone with half a brain would be on the lookout for suspicious activity and most of the pranks are dead obvious, but it's fun and gives everyone a chance to show off their lighter side.

And the best part? The day isn't over yet.

(More shenanigans listed here!)