This is a whole new game for me because I have never been handicapped  in my entire life.   Then, on Christmas Days of all days, I had a stroke.  Over the years I had figured that if it was a toss-up between a heart attack and a stroke, I would prefer the heart attack.  Why? you might ask yourself?

The reasoning is pretty simple.  I had always heard that they can both be rather bad, but the stroke was a bit worse because it could leave you with some part of your body paralyzed.

Well, that’s how it was in my case.  My entire right side is now paralyzed.

It’s not fun by any means and if I had to do it all over, I would say no thank you to the stroke again!

Be that as it may, we sometimes must accept the hand we are dealt and run with it.

Now I have started to learn how to write with my left hand.  When I was growing  up I didn’t need to worry about this sort of thing cause I was petty much ambidextrous, although there was a great deal of prejudice against left-handed people.  Be that as it may, life is a whole new experience for me thanks to my immobility.

I am  learning the survival skills again, but this time I must really concentrate on doing things.

You would be surprised at how complex very simple things are to do.  For istance, putting on a T-Shirt used to take me about ten to fifteen seconds.  Now I am lucky if I can do it in a couple minutes.  Think it’s so easy?  Here is a test for you:

Your extire right hand (or the hand you’re writting with) is completely numb from the shoulder on down to the tips of your fingers.  Got that?

Now take off your shirt.  If you have buttons down the middle then you cannot use your paralyzed had at all.  Your first delima with the bottons is opening the button on you good hand.  You cannot squeeze tight enough to get the button out of the button hole.

So what you find is that it’s not easy at all.

This blog deals with the trials and tribulations that one goes through when they are handicapped.