On the Other Hand: Leaning Left With MS

Some months ago my wife and I went out for dinner at our favorite sushi place. As is frequently the custom at sushi restaurants, the table setting included chopsticks. No forks.

I’ll be painfully honest here: We are both woefully unskilled at using chopsticks. We try, of course, feigning some ability for appearances sake before requesting forks out of both frustration and hunger (and likely to the horror of others in the restaurant).

But MS has turned my right hand into little more than a shiftless observer and has, for all intents and purposes, made using even a “decadent and blasphemous” fork with that hand hard (and more than a little messy, too).

Maybe it was the Kirin beer, but for some reason I tried using the chopsticks with my left hand.

And apparently that was “Lefty’s” moment to shine. I tore through California and tuna rolls, soft-shell crab, even the scraggly little salad that came with the meal. I was suddenly a chop-sticking master, deftly picking up single grains of rice with surgical precision and calm.

I’m not sure what excited me more, the ability to use chopsticks or the ability to use my left hand.

According to Scientific American, roughly 70-95 percent of humans are right-hand “dominant,” somewhere between 5-30 percent are left-hand dominant and an undetermined number of us are ambidextrous. Me? I’ve always been a righty. For writing, hand-holding and shaking, beer-bottle-lifting and everything else.

The chopstick affair was the first time I’d thought about my left-hand as the dominant one. But now I use it for my mouse, fork and occasionally for very limited handwriting, too. If you ever want to be humbled (and who among us hasn’t?), try printing with your non-dominant hand. Then raise the bar and try writing in cursive. So much of MS has the ability to take you back to childhood (whether you want to go or not) and to a time when you had very little control over functions that we grow to take for granted.

I’ve long been told my handwriting was that of a physician (not in a complimentary way) and that was using my “good” hand. “Lefty’s” letters are childlike and labored, hard-pressed loops and crosses and dots that require immense concentration in order to be remotely legible and it seems for all the world as if I should be writing about Dick and Jane seeing Spot run again.

Many years ago I wrote “One Sick Puppy,” an article about a young couple trying to save Rico, their five-year-old Doberman Pinscher, from cancer. The disease began in his chest, then spread into one of Rico’s legs — as is somewhat common in big, long-limbed dogs—and his owners had elected to have the leg amputated in an effort to stem the progression and save his life.

I watched somberly as the surgeon removed Rico’s leg, then gingerly repaired the wound and stitched it closed. He spent the night at the hospital and the next day Rico’s owners took him home.

About a month later they returned for a checkup. I was waiting at the hospital for them, not quite knowing what to expect, but somehow fearing the worst. They folded down the rear gate of their rusty black truck, gently lifted his crate off the truck bed and onto the ground and then, as Rico wiggled and squealed impatiently, set him free.

To my surprise he fairly exploded out of the crate and then scampered inside, oblivious to the leg he’d lost. He was grinning from ear to ear, the way dogs do, happily nipping and teasing the other “patients” in the hospital’s waiting room.

I think of him and that moment from time to time now, hoping that I’ll have the wisdom and strength to not dwell too much on what I’ve lost and instead, celebrate as much as possible what I have left.

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Note: Multiple Sclerosis News Today is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The opinions expressed in this column are not those of Multiple Sclerosis News Today, or its parent company, BioNews Services, and are intended to spark discussion about issues pertaining to multiple sclerosis.