become ambidextrous

who was 17 when he lost his right arm in a motorcycle accident. He said it took him years to become lefthanded. I feel way less pathetic now. :P

no matter how I try, I can’t work out how to do a cartwheel starting with my left side. In theory, it’s the opposite of a righthanded cartwheel, right? But in practice it feels wrong, like my body can’t balance.

Things are feeling much more natural. Typing with my just left hand, brushing my teeth, using a fork and coloring with Gabriel all feel much less foreign and way more normal now.

I’ve known for awhile that I have to be able to write with my left hand to consider this done. I can do pretty much anything now easily or semi easily with my left hand… except write. The thought of it makes me wince. It feels so clumsy and it gives me this strange surge of panic. It’s awkward and I always want to switch to my right. Going against habit, or possibly your instincts, is difficult.

But I’ve started, finally, to write out the alphabet with my left hand.

You can see a written sample here. It goes without saying that my right hand wrote the upper line, and my left is responsible for the bottom line. It took all my concentration! but I think it’s not bad for a beginner.

I am better with chop sticks using my left hand than my right. Strange!

I managed a bit of lefty coloring the other day!

The other night before work I managed to cut the index fingertip of my left hand. Not badly, barely even deep enough to draw blood, but just deep enough to cut into the ultra sensitive nerves.

Since I’ve been back to work, that night was the first time I ended up doing windows.

Because of my left hand being sore, I used my right hand for cleaning windows… but I’m right handed, so why did it feel backwards? I’d gotten so used to doing it lefthanded when I was pregnant that when I couldn’t any longer use my left hand, it felt weird!

I’m actually getting close to being fully ambidextrous! Now I just have to practice writing and printing with my left hand. I am almost there!

I have been coloring in a coloring book with my left hand, and it looks pretty decent. Last night my husband and I were making supper together and I switched the knife to my left hand to chop the veggies. It came a lot more naturally with my left than I had expected. Being around a sharp object with a hand that isn’t as adept was a bit nervewracking to think about, but in practice it came so naturally I didn’t even realize it til I was almost done. I said to Tommy “I can’t believe I did that all with my left hand! It didn’t feel awkward at all!”

So I’m going to keep on concentrating on printing and coloring to make my left more experienced, and then work my way up to writing.

Something I found amazing, was on a tv show about brain surgeons… This woman was pregnant and had a brain tumor, and the doctors wanted to treat her, but that would have killed her baby, and she would rather die and let her baby live, so she said no. So the doctors experimented on her with alternative treatments to prevent the tumor from spreading until her baby was born.

The alternative treatment was a risky procedure that involved seperating both lobes of the brain by cutting down the middle of her brain. But when this happened, she had a bad reaction to it; basically her brain was operating completely out of synchronization. She’d go to undo her coat with the one hand, and the other would zip it right back up – stuff like that.

So to combat this, the doctors would cover one eye with an eye patch so her visual sense to the corresponding side would be blocked off. Then a nurse would ask her written questions so that only ONE side of the brain could see the question, and therefore answer.

For example, I think they asked her her favorite color, and she responded with green. Once the other side of the brain heard her verbal answer, it caused a contradiction, and she said “wait a minute… green isn’t my favorite color!”

But it was to THAT side of her brain! Amazing, eh? My favorite color is light blue, but I wonder if my right brain actually likes hot pink or neon yellow the best! lol

(Anyway, in the end the baby was born healthy and they both lived. I didn’t actually get to see the ending, but my husband filled me in. I think the show was called 3 pounds and it was only on a few times.)

I am righthanded, but I can do many things with my left, like brush my teeth, clean windows, scrub toilets, sweep, pitch hay, clean the barn out, etc, with my left hand dominant. I can also eat, use the mouse and type, although I’m a bit slower at all.

I’m practicing spelling right now with my left hand, and I will consider this completed when I can write cursive and cut vegetables with a knife.

This is a great brain exercise, and when I’m trying to figure out how to hold something with the opposite hand, it reminds me of the coordination I learned as a child. It’s also wonderful to experience that frustration now, so that I will have it fresher in my mind when my son is at that age, and learning to write his name. I will know firsthand (pardon the pun) what he’s going through.