Any creative, everyday tips?
Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
Yeah!! Thanks for posting Erica - I'm so glad it worked for you:) Christy
Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
Yeah! Erica
We all knew how excited you would be to do a pony tail...
Christy... now can we teach her to do one handed cartwheels... LOL..
Kath
We all knew how excited you would be to do a pony tail...
Christy... now can we teach her to do one handed cartwheels... LOL..
Kath
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admin
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Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
Congrats! Believe me, when I got my first pony tail up when I was about 16, I was hysterical as well. What I dont like are those butterfly clip things where you twist your hair, hold it against your head, and then put the big clip over it. Still working on that. Any ideas?
Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
I wish Kath! No help here - Brittney is still too chicken to completely trust one arm. I know it's strong enough to hold her but she just keeps tossing her body all over the place and landing on her knee caps. LOL
Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
There is a section at the National Brachial Plexus/Erb's Palsy Association, Inc., on "How do I do it" You can find the site at: http://www.nbpepa.org
at the Interaction Section, or directly through
http://htmlgear.lycos.com/text/control. ... style=list
at the Interaction Section, or directly through
http://htmlgear.lycos.com/text/control. ... style=list
Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
Brenda,
Very useful and interesting website!
Thanks!
-Stephanie
Very useful and interesting website!
Thanks!
-Stephanie
Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
Ok, this tip is for those who have some use of their bpi arm. For the pony tails and such, I sit somewhere where I can bend my knee and prop my arm on it so I can reach/hold my hair. For drying it, I do something similar, like sit on the counter in the bathroom and put the brush or dryer in my bpi hand - depends on which side of my head I'm drying - and do it that way. Tilting my head so I can reach the top helps. It looks silly, but it works. Another tip for us vain females, trying to shave under your arms. I'll lift my bpi arm up and hold on to something, and then use one of those no-nick razors, because that doesn't give me a flat surface. A guy's electric razor works well to, because of how skinny they are.
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admin
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Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
A handy kitchen item I've found is the Zyliss grater with the suction cup on the bottom. It's the kind with a small drum, maybe 2 inches in diameter. I can put cheese or nuts in the top, put my bpi hand over it, and crank with the other one. Much better than the kind where the grater has to be held and squeezed with one hand while the other cranks. [I can grip with my bpi hand; most of the damage is up higher.]
On my bicycle, both of the shifters are on the right side of the handlebar. One sticks out from the end, and the other is a thumb shift. Before this, I was unable to ride a multispeed bike because my left arm isn't strong enough to go to the middle of the handlebar (is that the shaft?) and move the lever, or to keep the bike going straight while I move my right hand off the handlebar to shift.
A couple of years ago, I rented a mountain bike that I could shift (I believe it was a Rockhopper) because shifting was done by rotating the handle grips. That was the first time I could rent a shifty bike!
One suggestion on this page a couple of years ago for people who can't grip much, was to put velcro on the handlebar and also on a glove. It keeps the hand in place, but should come off fairly easily if you fall.
Putting on a backpack (not a day pack) is most easily accomplished by asking someone to hold the darn thing up. If someone isn't there, I lean it against a tree or a rock, get my left arm through the strap, lean way over so I don't fall backwards, stagger up, and slip my right arm through the other strap.
I, too, prop my elbow on my knee to put my hair in a ponytail.
I cross-country ski with one pole. Almost once a day, someone asks if I broke a pole. Then they (nicely) say that it must be really hard and that I do a good job. In truth, the hard part is always being out of shape!
As for shaving... give it up! I stopped that in 1978 and have probably saved days, maybe weeks, of time otherwise wasted! And it never gets prickly.
Here in the US, I find it no problem driving a car with a manual transmission with a left bpi. I don't think I could do it in the UK, though!
And I know there are a lot of lightbulb jokes out there, but changing a ceiling lightbulb, if it's behind a fixture that needs to be unscrewed with one hand and held with the other, is just impossible. Let someone else do it.
I tried hang gliding once, It didn't work out too well, because of the need to flare out for landing. The frame is basically an isosceles triangle, and to land (gracefully) it's necessary to push forward on the base of the frame with both arms. I tried to compensate by kind of twisting my right arm to keep the thing going straight, and ended up having what I think was equivalent to tennis elbow for a few months in my "good" arm. That's the only time I can recall hurting my right arm because of my left one. I also tried parachuting a few times. [I had a pretty hard time finding someone who would let me try.] I made a few jumps with a static line -- since I can't put both arms out and get into spread eagle position, they wouldn't let me free fall. It still was wonderful. I think we could have figured out a way if I'd pursued it harder. Now I'm old and cautious. Sigh.
It bugs me that I still worry about the way my arm (and my hair and the rest of me) looks. I notice my short arm more in pictures than in the mirror. I assume it's because I subconsciously lengthen the left one or shorten the right one when I see myself in the mirror. When I see a picture of myself, which happens less frequently, I probably make the same mental adjustment, seeing my short arm as shorter and the other as longer, exaggerating the difference, since a photo is the lateral opposite of what I see in the mirror. What do you think about this theory?
And on the same line, I believe that fewer people than we imagine notice our short arms. Most people don't pay that much attention and are also thinking more about what they perceive as their own flaws, which, in turn, we don't notice much because we're thinking about our short arms. Basically, it's just another characteristic. Do we think we'd be perfect otherwise? Not everyone without bpi can do everything we'd like to do, not even everything we CAN do. There are always smarter people, nicer people, more coordinated people, more energetic people, prettier people, etc, and also people who are less smart, not as nice, and so on. Just about every adult on this board is living a pretty normal life. Shall we talk about what's normal? Just last night, though, I DID notice a guy at the grocery store with only one hand holding his cute son in one arm and talking cheerfully with his wife. He didn't seem pitiable.
Someone out there has probably checked this out, but as long as I'm going on and on... It's estimated that there are about 700,000 strokes a year in the United States, and you can bet that many of them result in significant injury to the arm. There must be a wealth of information on accommodation of such injuries that could be applied to bpi.
I hope you'll forgive this long posting from someone who doesn't participate here much. I don't know what got into me. I'm under just a little less pressure than usual at work and perhaps had time to get carried away. I intended to just talk about the cheese grater and my bicycle. Now that I've typed it, I'm sending it!
Ellen
... just call me ranting, hairy Ellen
On my bicycle, both of the shifters are on the right side of the handlebar. One sticks out from the end, and the other is a thumb shift. Before this, I was unable to ride a multispeed bike because my left arm isn't strong enough to go to the middle of the handlebar (is that the shaft?) and move the lever, or to keep the bike going straight while I move my right hand off the handlebar to shift.
A couple of years ago, I rented a mountain bike that I could shift (I believe it was a Rockhopper) because shifting was done by rotating the handle grips. That was the first time I could rent a shifty bike!
One suggestion on this page a couple of years ago for people who can't grip much, was to put velcro on the handlebar and also on a glove. It keeps the hand in place, but should come off fairly easily if you fall.
Putting on a backpack (not a day pack) is most easily accomplished by asking someone to hold the darn thing up. If someone isn't there, I lean it against a tree or a rock, get my left arm through the strap, lean way over so I don't fall backwards, stagger up, and slip my right arm through the other strap.
I, too, prop my elbow on my knee to put my hair in a ponytail.
I cross-country ski with one pole. Almost once a day, someone asks if I broke a pole. Then they (nicely) say that it must be really hard and that I do a good job. In truth, the hard part is always being out of shape!
As for shaving... give it up! I stopped that in 1978 and have probably saved days, maybe weeks, of time otherwise wasted! And it never gets prickly.
Here in the US, I find it no problem driving a car with a manual transmission with a left bpi. I don't think I could do it in the UK, though!
And I know there are a lot of lightbulb jokes out there, but changing a ceiling lightbulb, if it's behind a fixture that needs to be unscrewed with one hand and held with the other, is just impossible. Let someone else do it.
I tried hang gliding once, It didn't work out too well, because of the need to flare out for landing. The frame is basically an isosceles triangle, and to land (gracefully) it's necessary to push forward on the base of the frame with both arms. I tried to compensate by kind of twisting my right arm to keep the thing going straight, and ended up having what I think was equivalent to tennis elbow for a few months in my "good" arm. That's the only time I can recall hurting my right arm because of my left one. I also tried parachuting a few times. [I had a pretty hard time finding someone who would let me try.] I made a few jumps with a static line -- since I can't put both arms out and get into spread eagle position, they wouldn't let me free fall. It still was wonderful. I think we could have figured out a way if I'd pursued it harder. Now I'm old and cautious. Sigh.
It bugs me that I still worry about the way my arm (and my hair and the rest of me) looks. I notice my short arm more in pictures than in the mirror. I assume it's because I subconsciously lengthen the left one or shorten the right one when I see myself in the mirror. When I see a picture of myself, which happens less frequently, I probably make the same mental adjustment, seeing my short arm as shorter and the other as longer, exaggerating the difference, since a photo is the lateral opposite of what I see in the mirror. What do you think about this theory?
And on the same line, I believe that fewer people than we imagine notice our short arms. Most people don't pay that much attention and are also thinking more about what they perceive as their own flaws, which, in turn, we don't notice much because we're thinking about our short arms. Basically, it's just another characteristic. Do we think we'd be perfect otherwise? Not everyone without bpi can do everything we'd like to do, not even everything we CAN do. There are always smarter people, nicer people, more coordinated people, more energetic people, prettier people, etc, and also people who are less smart, not as nice, and so on. Just about every adult on this board is living a pretty normal life. Shall we talk about what's normal? Just last night, though, I DID notice a guy at the grocery store with only one hand holding his cute son in one arm and talking cheerfully with his wife. He didn't seem pitiable.
Someone out there has probably checked this out, but as long as I'm going on and on... It's estimated that there are about 700,000 strokes a year in the United States, and you can bet that many of them result in significant injury to the arm. There must be a wealth of information on accommodation of such injuries that could be applied to bpi.
I hope you'll forgive this long posting from someone who doesn't participate here much. I don't know what got into me. I'm under just a little less pressure than usual at work and perhaps had time to get carried away. I intended to just talk about the cheese grater and my bicycle. Now that I've typed it, I'm sending it!
Ellen
... just call me ranting, hairy Ellen
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Erica DeAnn
- Posts: 23
- Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2002 4:49 pm
Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
Hairy Ellen,
That was a terrific post! It was great reading on my lunch break! I am so impressed with all that you've done in your life. You are a true inspiration. I would never have enough guts to try to ski or hang glide. Thanks for sharing!
Erica DeAnn
That was a terrific post! It was great reading on my lunch break! I am so impressed with all that you've done in your life. You are a true inspiration. I would never have enough guts to try to ski or hang glide. Thanks for sharing!
Erica DeAnn
Re: Any creative, everyday tips?
Ellen,
Don't worry, I rant to, just not usually about my arm. Though I did do that for the anger survey. Unfortunately, being 16 and dark haired, I doubt society would accept it if I stopped shaving.
Besides, that makes my legs itchy. ::shrugs:: Now, time to be dragged off to Tennessee. ::cringes:: No offense to anyone in Tennessee, but my grabdparents town is BORING! Hehe, anyone have any helpful tips for surviving 12 hours shut in a vehicle with your family, and then a week or two in a town that doesn't even have a Walmart? You know a place is small when they don't have a Walmart. ::sighs:: Anywayz, now I'm off topic. Elsetime, peeps.
Lindsey
Don't worry, I rant to, just not usually about my arm. Though I did do that for the anger survey. Unfortunately, being 16 and dark haired, I doubt society would accept it if I stopped shaving.
Besides, that makes my legs itchy. ::shrugs:: Now, time to be dragged off to Tennessee. ::cringes:: No offense to anyone in Tennessee, but my grabdparents town is BORING! Hehe, anyone have any helpful tips for surviving 12 hours shut in a vehicle with your family, and then a week or two in a town that doesn't even have a Walmart? You know a place is small when they don't have a Walmart. ::sighs:: Anywayz, now I'm off topic. Elsetime, peeps.Lindsey