The Things That Don't Suck

So there are some things that suck about breaking your elbow. Here are some things that help. 

• My friends Luisa and Pedro both pointed me toward using the speech-to-text features of my devices to ease the process of writing. Although this is something I’ve been doing all along, their nudges prompted me to look at Voice Control on my Mac (Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control), a feature that takes the regular dictation features built into the Mac and kicks them up a notch, allowing keyboard free editing. For example, in this sentence, I can say “capitalize Mac,” and it will do that. I’ve powered a bunch of writing tasks today much more easily since I learned about it.
• To aid putting pants on one-handed, stick one finger, from your good hand through the butto nhole and pull it over, around the button. It helps.
• To aid in squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush, stick the bottom of the toothbrush into the crook of the handle of a mug on the bathroom countertop to hold it in place.
• Did you know that you can request copies of your medical records from Health PEI? Here’s the online form. You’ll need a photo of your health card and photo ID. The orthopaedic surgeons notes from my first visit to the fracture clinic start out like this: “Peter presents to the clinic for evaluation of his right elbow. He is a 59-year-old, right-hand dominant gentleman who works as a printmaker. He is very healthy and active.”
• Friend of the blog David recommended no-tie shoelaces. Lisa is picking me up a pair in town today. Footwear independence!
• Our friends Valerie and Lars is invited us over to their pool yesterday. Although my bandaged arm can’t get wet, I was able to stand in the shallow end, up to my waist. Oh man, that was great.
• We figured out the turning on the air-conditioning before it gets hot is the way to go during a heat wave. Apparently air conditioners are great at maintaining temperature, not so good at forcibly lowering it when it’s already too hot.
• This $3 bamboo phone holder from IKEA has proved a very useful tool for one arm to use of my phone. Putting the phone in upside-down gives me enough resistance to plug in the Lightning cable on the bottom. Resting the phone in landscape, and putting the holder on the pillow that’s supporting my arm, lets me watch videos without having to hold the phone.
• Well-placed tea towels have proved very useful for keeping soup out of my lap, supporting my wrist, wrapping around an ice pack for cooling.
• Departure, a TV series starring Christopher Plummer that just showed up on Netflix, has proved a very helpful distraction when I need one.
• My workout coach sending me a care package filled with books and sweets and a card signed by everyone in the 5:00 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday crew.

Of course the greatest thing that doesn’t suck is the support of those that love me: I have no idea how I do all this without them. 

Lisa especially: she has been doing all the driving, all the cooking, all the clothes-folding, all the house-cleaning. Do you need two arms for it? She’s been doing it, on top of everything else that summer throws at us every day.