First of all I want to make it clear I am not bitching or complaining just sharing with you my observations.

As there is not much I can do these days, I decided to find my long forgotten scientist hat and explore the wonder that is our body. As I find many of my observations quite entertaining, I decided to share some of them with you:

1. Although your arm seems quite movable when you have the type of cast I have, it is quite useless, mainly because you can’t use the rotary movements of the arm. I find the explanation in this page of Wikipedia the easiest to understand. I like the  names of these movements: Supination and Pronation – this last link entertained me so I am sharing, not that it gives a good explanation! (aren’t those guys amusing?!?)
2. Our arms are quite fascinating tools with many little unknown to me parts and actions. We need all of them or at least most of them in good working order in order to fully use our arms and hands.
3. They all have curious (at least to me) names like: Radius, Ulna, Scaphoid, Palanges and many more.
4. Without the radial movements, you can’t bring the fingers of the limited arm to your face in the natural way!
5. Did you ever notice your face likes to be scratched by a specific hand? yes it does, ask me how I know.
6. The same is true for rubbing one’s eyes.
7. When you use the other hand to do the scratching/rubbing, it doesn’t feel the same, not at all!
8. It is quite hard for a hand to wash itself and impossible to soap the back of the hand!
9. You can’t properly dry one hand with a towel without the help of the other. Fingers of the other hand are not good enough – this is quite annoying! (yes, this was a tiny bitching, sorry about that,,,)
10. The fingers of an immobilized arm are not very useful for tying your shoelaces!
11. Having a non functional arm throw your body balance off! You can’t automatically know what you can or can’t do! It is a weird feeling.

All of this made me think of the book:

Especially the story: “The Disembodied Lady” – In this story, Oliver Sacks tell us about an unfortunate woman who lost all proprioception which is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body. She couldn’t feel her body and as a result she was completely motionless and almost toneless – until I read this story, I didn’t even know we possess this sense!

I think this is enough for one day!

Before I go I want to share with you a photo of my angel in a sweater I managed to finish before my little mishap:

He is my saviour these days!

It is a Cobblestone knitted in Green Mountain Green, details here. I bought the yarn just before Christmas in the Green Mountain Spinnery in Vermont in 2007 (I believe) and meant to knit it as a Christmas present that year,,,, It is good my Joe is not only an angel but a very patient one too :)

And until I will be able to knit again, can someone knit a few rows for me please?!? Thank you!