Roamer: Life on the left causes a major revolution on the home front

The road from Coleraine to Belfast was blanketed in fog and lashed by rain so it was a stressful drive home and, in a rush to get indoors, I tripped and fell. Thus the ‘right distal radius fracture’ - basically, a broken wrist on the right arm.

I’ve been recuperating and am well on the way to total recovery and at last, back in Saturday’s News Letter!

That’s all thanks to the superb workforce in our Health and Social Care services, which I’ll recount here soon, but today’s page is all about ‘life on the left’!

I’ve been right handed all my life so a whole new world dawned when the nurse practitioner scanned my X-Ray in the hospital emergency department and told me that my wrist was fractured.

It was slightly impacted too - the broken bone crushed into itself when I hit the floor!

With my lower right arm rigidly encased in plaster of Paris (applied by the nurse practitioner while two colleagues straightened the bone) I gingerly got off the treatment couch and knew immediately that everything would be very different.

There was a little movement in my thumb and fingers and my lower arm could bend at the elbow, but my captive right hand and wrist were defunct, useless ‘dead weight’ in the plaster!

I couldn’t put on my jacket, or take a Kleenex tissue from my pocket, or answer my mobile phone.

In the hospital loo I couldn’t manipulate my belt, buttons and other ‘accessories’, or wash my hands, not even the right one that worked!

I couldn’t pay for a cardboard cup of hospital tea, or carry a tray to the canteen table, or open a sachet of sugar.

For a lifelong right hander, these mundane, routine, everyday tasks were well-nigh impossible with the left hand.

Homeward bound in a taxi - arm in a sling, an empty sleeve dangling ominously - I considered the domestic complexities awaiting.

I needn’t have worried - a devoted team of carers made life on the left viable, even enjoyable - particularly at mealtimes.

But I didn’t have a shower in my house so bathtime was impracticable with a fractured wrist in plaster, and access and egress was impossible without substantial aid.

Three sturdy workmen, collectively licensed in every facet of home conversion, turned the bathroom into a shower room and I gleefully waved good bye to my ancient bath as it sat desolately on my snow-covered lawn.

Domesticity was totally revolutionised by life on the left!

Belts and buttons were unmanageable so loose-fitting, elasticated tracksuits and T shirts replaced trousers and shirts.

Washing was left handed, with a sponge, at a sink or basin, aided when necessary by a carer.

Old slip-on shoes were recovered from the junk cupboard as shoelaces were impossible.

Unable to drive, all shopping was online, typed into a computer with one hand, interminably slowly!

Carers heated pre-prepared meals in my previously idle microwave.

Fortunately there’s a Left Handers Club, with an official website, and an international Left Handers Day every August 13!

I haven’t needed to purchase any of their specially designed products, particularly for the kitchen, but their advice was useful, and the carers offered numerous left-hand hints too.

The club’s facts and figures are intriguing; between ten and twelve percent of the world’s population is left handed and, amazingly, most animals show a 50-50 split when it comes to which hand, foot or paw they use the most.

(Kangaroos tend to favour their left paw and apparently 90% of parrots use their left foot to pick things up!)

Sadly, the words for left handed in many languages have insulting double meanings, like ‘mancino’ in Italian, which means left handed as well as crooked, and ‘gauche’ in French means left handed as well as awkward and clumsy.

The club traces left handedness back to cave drawings, apparently drawn predominantly by left handers.

And there’s a long list of historic left handed folk which includes a high proportion of presidents, prime ministers, popes and pop stars.

Roamer, happily a temporary part-timer, isn’t on the list!