Journeys with One Hand: Shaving

[marcmagus]

I've started making some vague attempts to get myself ready for next week when I lose the use of my left hand for at least two weeks. I've been doing some research into one-handed keyboarding, but the options are kind of overwhelming, and now it's kind of last-minute to do anything about it.

Anyway, this morning I attempted to shave using only my right hand. It all went surprisingly well, although I got interrupted before attempting to put after-shave lotion on, which I expect to be rather difficult. I was worried I was going to have to give this whole thing up for a couple of weeks, but it looks like it may actually be possible to keep up regular shaving. Cleaning up the excess lather with a washcloth one-handed, as well as getting to the tricky bits with the hand that's on the wrong side of my face, were both surprisingly easy.

I don't know about more general hygiene, though...for anybody offering to keep me company, I'm sorry if I'm kind of gross.

Comments

What is the sound of one hand shaving?

[soulchanger.livejournal.com]

I've been one-armed a few times - twice without my right and once without my left - and it's actually surprising how well you adapt. Of course, the first time, my right arm was in a cast for something like three months, so I had plenty of time to get used to doing everything lefty - from taking notes in school to personal hygiene (although I was twelve at the time so shaving wasn't an issue, and it was 1993 so typing wasn't much of an issue either) to all the other minutiae of daily life.

When I broke my left hand a few years back my biggest problem was dealing with my long hair - I couldn't braid it or even put it in a pony tail or bandana by myself. My solution was to have friends put my hair in lots of little braids capable of surviving being showered and I just kept it that way until I got my splint removed (well, okay, technically I removed the splint myself, having decided that I was more competent than the doctors at Wycoff Heights Medical Center, but that's neither here nor there). And by the end of a month I was able to type right-handed on a full keyboard at about a third of my normal speed.

Anyway, good luck!

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a great voice recognition program. It doesn't take terribly long to train; it will still make silly mistakes, but you can manage a lot that you otherwise might not be able to do. Good luck with surgery!