Work got me a new ergo keyboard/trackpad to use! Whee! Already my hands are more comfortable, and as soon as the trackpad is set up correctly (grrr), I won’t have to reach over to use the pointing device anymore!
The joy this brings me can only be fully appreciated by someone who has also had to medicate a sore hand or wrist.
When it comes to disabilities that can cripple me, I often wonder if losing my hands or my sight would be more devastating to me, personally or professionally. My sight would be a severe loss– computer use would be difficult, at best. I would never be able to cuddle down with a good book– or, it would be difficult and painstaking, and I’ve done enough painstaking reading in my day. Even getting a blinding headache when trying to read would be crippling this way– reading is the primary way I receive information about my world and process it. It’s the stimulant to my senses and my thougths and imagination. I can hear just fine, but I do not listen as well as I watch and see, and if I remember a sound or a conversation, it is only because my brain has converted it into words, text that I can process and digest, instead of leaving it as sound patterns in my head. I am unable to identify a song after the first hearing, but I can do it after repeated tries, and always better if I know the title of the song, and if it has words.
However, I’ve had poor vision my entire life, and I know that blind poets and writers have existed in the past, and continue to do so today. I can touch-type perfectly, even with my eyes closed. It would be a loss, and it would slow me down, but I don’t know that it would cripple me the same way as losing the use of my hands.
My hands are the part of me that expresses what I think and feel. They are the part that touches to type– for all that I’ve experimented with speech recognition technology, I’ve never used it long-term enough to consider it a viable alternative (though I am working on it with Trinity, because I want it to be so). My hands are how I put my thoughts into words, onto “paper,” either electronic or real paper. They are also how I express myself musically, although that is also a back, mouth, body gesture as well as a manual one. Woodworking is a little-known love of mine– a purely manual labor of craft and creativity that cannot be duplicated effectively without one’s hands.
Losing my speech or my hearing would be less traumatic, I think, than losing either my hands or my eyes. I know that I could still enjoy music, even, without hearing it audibly. I know I could still “speak” without a voice. I would miss my sense of smell or taste slightly, but I would not cease to be myself. Even color-blindness would hardly stall me; I am not a painter to wilt at the loss of my violets and blues.
I realize this is a pointless, and probably over-flowery musing. After all, what kind of deranged person thinks about which disabilities she would prefer to get? How absurd– as if one could choose such things, anyway!
But if you are the kind of person who doesn’t take care of her body very well, then you think about the parts of your body you must focus on the most, or which sense organs you rely on, so that you can appreciate them and acknowledge their importance in your life. I consider my eyes to be quite plain, but when the right light hits them, they have gold in them. My hands are much the same way– 90% of the time, they type or write or draw or play mediocre, plodding reflections of reality. But once in a while, the right light hits them, and then they become golden.