Coping Single Handed
by Catherine Lang
On the 25th April 1984 my life changed forever – for the better. Not that I saw it that way at the time. It took me a few years to realise that an accident can have a positive outcome.
That particular morning, life was great. I had a new job, a new house which I shared with my husband, Ronald, and a small ginger kitten, both of whom I adored, and the sun was shining. If it hadn’t been, I might have taken the train as usual rather than driving into my office in Edinburgh, but one thing I have learned in the past 22 years is that ‘if only’ is pointless.
I took the car, I parked it under our building and at 4pm, running late for a meeting, I came down to find both roller grille doors closed. It was a simple task to put an arm through one grille and press a button to open the other. I’d done it dozens of times. So why, this time, did I press the button that opened the gate my arm was through? To this day I have no idea. Whatever the reason for that moment of abstraction, as soon as the gate moved I saw my arm break and realised I was trapped. As the grille started to make its inexorable way up and into the winding mechanism I lost consciousness. When I came to I was hanging by the shoulder a few feet from the ground, my right arm locked in the roll of heavy mesh.
Colleagues dialled 999, summoning Fire Brigade and Ambulance. I had been certain that when the firemen finished with their cutters and passed me into the caring hands of the ambulance men, it would be without the arm. But I was wrong.
While gently placing my battered and blood soaked sleeve into an inflatable splint, the ambulance man whispered.
“I can feel a pulse. The artery isn’t damaged.”
Hope was reborn. At 7pm I was wheeled into theatre, from which I emerged after four and a half hours with an enormous plaster cast from knuckles to shoulder.
The next morning I found myself half sitting, half lying, with my right arm suspended in a bolster slip attached to a drip stand, and in my left arm a saline drip. Talk about immobility! What morphine doesn’t know about killing pain is not worth knowing, but it is certainly not conducive to a clear head. Everything seemed unreal.
Reality, however, arrived in the shape of one of the surgeons who explained that while my elbow had been rebuilt using bone from my left hip, there had been considerable nerve damage. In addition, damage to the shoulder had caused an unpronounceable lesion that only compounded the problem. I still had the arm but nothing could give me back what yesterday I had taken for granted – a limb that could move and a hand that could write. Today, it was paralysed.
I decided the first thing I needed to do was learn to write. Armed with notepad and pencil, I went back to basics, writing the letters of the alphabet one by one and then trying to form them into words. I could soon write my name but it bore no resemblance to my previous handwriting. It was shaky and extremely childish! Very much the way I felt. Everything had to be relearned, left-handed. I soon came to understand why left-handers bemoan this right-handed world, but that is another story!
I begged to return home where I believed I’d better learn to cope. It proved entirely the wrong environment as there I was cocooned, living in a twilight world induced by painkillers and apathy. When, after just seven weeks, the restrictive plaster was removed, the enormity of the situation could no longer be ignored. I was totally unprepared to deal with a limb that would not move and yet was agonisingly painful and unbelievably heavy.
Some people say that coming to terms with disability is like facing bereavement. Certainly the sense of loss was palpable. One afternoon, unable to find any respite from pain, I screamed from the depths of my soul. Venting anger, frustration and fear helped me finally to confront the terrifying truth: the paralysis was irreversible.
Two things happened that put me on track, the first very much against my will. Ronald took me to the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay on a self-catering holiday. It seemed nothing short of insanity. We had to make a five hour journey by land and sea in a tiny car packed with all the paraphernalia of the sick bed, plus everything needed for self-catering on a small island.
But he knew me better than I knew myself. Colonsay, with its beauty and tranquillity, is balm for any troubled soul. There I took my first steps back to independence. I learned how to get myself in and out of bed unaided, to wash, to dress – all the while nursing the arm like a babe in swaddling clothes.
I returned home with a lot of confidence and dignity restored.
But I had a long way to go. I could not live without painkillers, which still addled my brain. Then, just three months after the accident I met the naturopath, Jan de Vries.
I went to see him with little hope and even less expectation knowing nothing of his type of treatment. Yet the doctors offered no hope of improvement. The thought of carrying a dead weight round my neck for the rest of my life sapped my new-found determination. Jan’s words turned despair into hope.
“Yes, we can do something about this,” he said matter-of-factly.
This was the first time that I’d been included in my own healing. Through the next year, my progress astonished the hospital. With acupuncture and herbal remedies, certain muscles started to work again, some feeling returned and the pain went from intolerable to bearable. Best of all the herbal painkillers helped me rediscover my brain and begin to focus on getting my life back.
Getting back into office life was quite a hurdle but happily everyone simply accepted me as I was, christening me the one armed bandit. One challenge was learning to drive one handed, which was more easily achieved than I had imagined once I acquired an automatic car with a rotating steering knob.
Within two years my arm was strong enough to be free of a sling and I felt ready to spread my wing, taking up a role with British Aerospace that had me travelling worldwide. In March 1987 I was the sole passenger on the delivery flight of a Jetstream 31 across the Atlantic. As the aircraft was a small turboprop we had to travel the Great Circle route through Reykjavik, Sonderstrom in Greenland, Goose Bay and Bangor, Maine before arriving in Washington DC. Along the way we encountered a blizzard, subzero temperatures and majestic scenery. My wanderlust was born.
Travelling ‘single-handed’ means travelling light, preferably with a shoulder bag or lightweight trolley bag. So armed, I’ve now visited 40 countries, sometimes with my husband, sometimes with friends and occasionally alone. One of my great joys is being on water. Cruising is marvellous – you unpack once and the hotel moves! However, I had long had the urge to sail and first learned in a trimaran on an inshore loch before graduating to bigger craft.
My greatest sailing adventure was aboard the STS Lord Nelson, which provides facilities for disabled and able-bodied adults to try their hand at Tall Ship sailing. I signed on as voyage crew for a six-day Channel trip and enjoyed every second of it.
The maxim, ‘one hand for yourself and one for the boat’ does limit my usefulness on an ordinary yacht but I can steer, navigate, and even furl the sails thanks to technology.
Modern gadgets have been a great boon. From automatic doors to electric tin openers, from microlight laptops and hands-free phones, the technological revolution has enabled me to tackle many tasks.
One advantage of being as I am is that you get to know some wonderful people. There is always someone out there who will help me try my hand at anything. I learned to ride and to snorkel (I never could swim) thanks to the patience of new friends. And when I decided to raise some money for charity to mark the 10th anniversary of the accident by doing something I’d never done before which could be done with one hand, abseiling seemed the ideal option. A patient mountaineer helped me overcome my fear of heights and my hoped for total of £1000 was more than trebled as friends and colleagues dug deep in their pockets to help me achieve my goal. When the day dawned I was a nervous wreck but to resounding cheers and the click of camera shutters I managed the descent and even ended up with my picture in the newspapers.
Having an upper limb disability means that it is unobtrusive, so many people do not notice it. Even those who do tend to ignore it because I have always tried to. I am certainly clumsy and sometimes struggle to do the simplest tasks, but those who know me just let me get on with it unless I ask for help. My fierce independence, born of being an only child, has stood me in good stead. The few things that are impossible have to be accepted and worked around. For me it’s mind over matter – if you don’t mind, it really doesn’t matter!
In the early 1990s a colleague paid me the compliment of saying, “That arm of yours hasn’t changed your life at all, has it?” The honest answer is yes, of course it has, in many ways, but this is who I am. I’ve done much more than I ever would have dreamed of attempting had the accident never happened.
Twenty-two years on, I still continue my regular visits to Jan de Vries. I am still involved in my own healing, still a key participant not a helpless bystander. The arm remains 85 per cent paralysed, which makes it 15 per cent useful. One can do a lot with 15 per cent.
I don’t know what the future holds. Who does? For now I intend simply and happily to get on with life, single-handed.