Welcome apophenia!

[Schneibster]

I have trouble between capslock and tab.

Welcome in apophenia.

[hadespussercats]

The VA is doing a lot of work on prosthetics these days. I saw one guy trying to snap his "fingers" last time I was at JC.

I was thinking-- if the goal was to create a prosthesis simply for a single task, so the one you'd use to catch a ball is not the same one you'd use to type, and if you were designing just for peak functionality-- not to re-create the look of a full complement of fingers, that there are some really interesting things you could do.

J and I tossed ideas around for about an hour last night. He filled me in on some stuff he'd read about prosthetics, that assign different muscle groups in the forearm to different replacement fingers. I'd read about a German man who had a prosthetic leg that fit right into his femur via a titantium socket (bone will grow to merge with titanium, which is pretty amazing)-- apparently, because his prosthetic leg fit right into the bone, he could still feel his prosthetic foot against the ground, which made walking, even running, much easier.

But at the end of all of this, I said, "Honey, is there any version of this that would be better than just using voice recognition software?"

"Not really."

Unless you want to work on a computer that doesn't have that software, I guess...

[charlou]

apophenia, I owe you an apology ... Your posts are often so lengthy and beautifully written that I must admit to being skeptical about your story initially. I've come to realise that it was my prejudice and ignorance about what it is possible to achieve on a keyboard with nine fingers missing which was causing the skepticism. After giving it some thought, what matters most to me is that I find you interesting: intelligent, witty, insightful and unusual .. and I just like you.

Wow. I'm dumbfounded. I had no inkling you had such reservations about me. I've always found you to be most loving, supportive and kind to me. I applaud the strength, courage, and, love, that it took for you to share this with me. Before I go any further, let me insist, strenuously, that you owe me no apology whatsoever. Thoughts, feelings, whatever -- I don't believe in thought crimes; how you deal with them, what actions or words you choose based on them, sure, but not the thoughts themselves. You are blameless.

And it's perfectly understandable to me that a person would have doubts trying to reconcile my abilities with my handicap. Indeed, when I returned to irc chatting in earnest after many months away with hospital and whatnot, there were those among my fellow moderators who doubted my story -- my typing was too fast, and the punctuation and capitalization too perfect (them not knowing about stickykeys). So I scanned my hands in my multifunction printer and that shut them up. I think they're being kind, but some remark I'm faster with one finger than they are with ten. If they, gauging my performance in real time were skeptical, your skepticism in this medium is quite understandable.

It's late, and my thinking is coming apart as I try to express and respond, so I'll simply cut to the chase. Charlou, I adore you. I simply adore you. You have never mistreated me, been unkind, you've been wonderful to me. There is no harm here. None at all.

Thank you ... You're very gracious and kind. I'm humbled.

[apophenia]

The VA is doing a lot of work on prosthetics these days. I saw one guy trying to snap his "fingers" last time I was at JC.

I was thinking-- if the goal was to create a prosthesis simply for a single task, so the one you'd use to catch a ball is not the same one you'd use to type, and if you were designing just for peak functionality-- not to re-create the look of a full complement of fingers, that there are some really interesting things you could do.

J and I tossed ideas around for about an hour last night. He filled me in on some stuff he'd read about prosthetics, that assign different muscle groups in the forearm to different replacement fingers. I'd read about a German man who had a prosthetic leg that fit right into his femur via a titantium socket (bone will grow to merge with titanium, which is pretty amazing)-- apparently, because his prosthetic leg fit right into the bone, he could still feel his prosthetic foot against the ground, which made walking, even running, much easier.

But at the end of all of this, I said, "Honey, is there any version of this that would be better than just using voice recognition software?"

"Not really."

Unless you want to work on a computer that doesn't have that software, I guess...

It’s true, the VA is doing a lot of wonderful work, for Vets. As a disabled person – especially with a history of mental illness and suicide, on public assistance, and public insurance – such wonders are never going to reach my corner of the globe. I think about the man whose fingers were replaced with nerve-linked motor assisted finger prostheses, and the amount of money spent on him, or the individual who lost a chunk of his leg muscle and regained enough for workable purposes by stem cell grafts. Me on the other hand, I’m just a welfare chick, with no mind and a broken body – I’m close to the homeless in the scheme of priorities; if they could ship us off to a wasteland in Canada or Alaska, where they wouldn’t have to look at us, or pay for us, that they would do.

But to be sure, as to my own situation, it’s not really a big deal (and more on this in the second half of this post). Probably 99% of the day, I’m not aware that I’m handicapped. Sure I see the broken hands, and while I definitely do things differently than an able bodied person does – opening bottles, typing, whatever – but I don’t actually “think consciously” about the difference: if I need to open a bottle, I don’t pause and think, “boy, I sure wish I could open bottles in the way I used to do” or “if I had more fingers I could do this better”. I don’t think, period; I just open the bottle – no handicapped awareness whatsover (again, seee part 2). Only when something is difficult – say picking up a coin, a credit card, or piece of paper off the ground; trying to use coin money; or what have you. My mind doesn’t reach for pity and sadness, the mind attacks, with all it has, attacking the task – or in moments of uncommon wisdom, seeking assistance from someone else.

I may be unique in this, I don’t know. I’ve talked in other threads about how I likely became attracted to the Taoist philosophy because, on the one hand, it explains who I am in a goood light, whether excusing lack of ambition as a virtue, or whatever; the other side I see to it is exactly the opposite – it’s said when the student is ready, the teacher will arrive – I think we are attracted to philosophies that fix or repair the broken parts within us, the lacks we don’t recognize consciously, but which are soothed by participation in a tradition. In my case, Taoism was that which fit whichever side of that coin needed to be fitted. And Taoism provides enormous support for dealing with loss, and to a lesser extent, pain. One of my favorite verses starts out, “Accept disgrace willingly / what do I mean by accept disgrace willingly? / accept being unimportant.” That’s a powerful message for the bulk of us, who, not insensitively speaking, live our lives as unimportant people, unimportant to the greater world.

Anyway, I had a point before I got sidetracked. When I was in the hospital, there was a vet come home for treatment as he was basically hyper-vigilant 24/7. But he expressed amazement at how I took my new condition in stride, with perfect equanimity. He told me of soldiers he’d known who, after suffering trauma or debilitization like mine, quite simply lost it. These soldiers could not come to grips with their traumatically altered world. I don't know how much is me, and how much is the Taoism, but I’m sure the marriage of the two prepared me for this in ways that others lacked. Thinking it over, I also have to give some credit to the fact that 11 years prior to this, I was diagnosed with a mental illness. Most people aren’t aware, but being diagnosed with and coming to terms with a mental illness is traumatic in the same sense as having your leg blown off is. What you trusted, is no longer trustworthy, the skills you spent a lifetime learning, made insufficient, the things you never thought about before, now you must consciously think about all the time, you’re faced with a problem, a task, a challenge, for which you have no skills – and you need those skills RIGHT NOW! And that’s not even speaking of the other side, the loss, both losses before and losses going into the future. Anyway, to get back on point, I had 11 years of dealing with a traumatic wound to my world, and, while a physical wound is different, I’d walked the same road before; thinking on it now, I suspect that, far more than my Taoism was the reason I survived so well. Thank you, hadespussercat, I don’t think I’d have put that together without your question (and I’m doubly thankfull, as there’s something even more significant that your question brought out for me).

As to the latter part of your question, I’m not sure I can generalize on that. Part is the missing piece, voice recognition software has its limitations – it’s not like you just speak and it all comes flowing out. Inevitably, you have to make 1-3 corrections to the software’s guess as to your intent or words, and when you do, you have to go back over a phrase with either the clumsy correction tools or resort to the keyboard. And it can be context sensitive – I spend a lot of time chatting on irc, where things like a tab command, a colon, a slash or pound sign, the software is hopeless, so you’re mixing hand and voice (there’s a feature of chat clients that if you type part of a person’s name and hit tab, it will “auto-complete” the name for you and add a colon; impossible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking). And then there’s stupid things, like Dragon won’t recognize obscene words – if you’re a colorful speaker, as I am, you have to manually intervene. And only the most expensive versions accept input from like a voice recorder, which I can’t afford.

The other thing is, as noted, I’m fast. Voice recognition software works amazingly well, but I can be as fast typing as I can with Dragon, and the exact thing that I want to say does flow right from my finger tip, without any obstacles; it’s a lot more comfortable, for me, to type, rather than to constantly be fighting an imperfect voice recognition program. (And I haven’t upgraded to Windows 7 due to monetary reasons, but half of me is excited at the possibility of having free and good Chinese and Japanese voice recognition on tap. I’ve tried to acquire OCR software for Chinese AND Japanese, but the programs I tried were crap.)

Anyway, I’m going to jump to your other question, as this ended up tl;dr anyway.

[apophenia]

I've just read this last page, about touch typing, and I was wondering (maybe you get into it earlier) if prosthetic fingers would be helpful-- and wondering what they'd need to be like to do the job well (I build costumes, so this sort of design question is interesting to me.) I mean-- what sort of shape would be useful, or how they'd attach to your hands to be able to use muscle memory.

I hope that sort of wondering doesn't seem rude. The idea of losing fingers is one that frightens me a lot-- I admire your ability to recover from that. And picturing these sorts of solutions-- prosthetics and such-- fascinates me, and helps me manage the fear.

This set of questions is in some ways easier, but also in other ways much harder for me.

When I was in the hospital (for 3 months – they were worried about suicide) the occupational therapist I had talked to me about the possibility of prosthetics in place of my fingers, and she basically said that while they provide a cosmetic improvement, their functionality is distinctly limited, as there’s no way a prosthesis can hope to duplicate the range of pressure that a human hand can, from terribly delicate to crushing – opening 2 liter bottles with the plastic top is difficult because I don’t have near as much grip strength as a non-handicapped person does. On the other side, think of holding an egg upside-down, or catching one—strong enough to do it, yet sensitive and delicate enough not to break the egg. She basically said they provide the ability to “pose” the fingers with some modest pressure gripping whatever is between the fingers, but not enough to make a big difference in your life. Since then, other people have told me differently. Knowing what little I know about the kinetics of the hand and body, I suspect they are in error, and my OT was right. That, and at the time it was like, “Why would I want to wear these rubber things around, posing them, pretending they’re helping, when all it’s doing – for me, if not for others – is drawing attention to my lack of fingers?” Why? I couldn’t fathom wanting that.

So I’ve never pursued prosthetics, both in terms of getting them, or even in finding out who is right about their usefulness.

But your question brings up something I guess I’ve never thought about. And I know I haven’t consciously been avoiding it, but perhaps some part of me, “knew it was there,” and chose not to let us/me do anything about it. I’ve known for some time – not constantly, but whenever the occasion arises – that if I see a picture of myself that show my hands, I’m repulsed. I don’t know how to describe it, but the me in pictures or the mirror (I have no full length mirrors) is something I want desperately for it not to exist. Prior to my “accident”, I was not unattractive. But now, if I see the whole of me… the feelings are hard to convey. I want to deny that person in the photo, that that is not me – it can’t be, that can’t be me – and if it is, that’s not a truth I can live with; so I don’t look. I guess I’ve got some body issues surrounding my disability, which I not only haven’t faced, I didn’t even know I had. My immediate reaction is to minimize, avoid and forget; and I’m very, very good at those things. And I have other things going on which make resolving such body issue questions somewhat academic. I don’t know. I’m babbling, and I’ve got a train ticket to inebriation land, so maybe I’ll just leave it here.

Thank you, for some very thought provoking questions, hadespussercats. And thank all of you for welcoming me into your community.

A biento.


Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to get drunk I go....

[charlou]

enjoy.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Ap, the work done at the VA is being done by private companies who will get the patents on the technology. They do this kind of thing at the VA because we can't sue if something goes pear-shaped, so their insurance is lower. We're used to "doing point", I've had a few procedures that were "either this works or it doesn't" level stunts. Hopefully they'll learn enough to get something out there for you in the not too distant future.

[hadespussercats]

apophenia, your posts were about as far from tl;dr as could be-- compelling reading. And thank you for taking the time to answer my questions so thoughtfully.

A few thoughts--
1. Dragon doesn't recognize obscenities? What the fuck??!!! (yeah, yeah.) How dare the designers censor what their users want to write? In a way, I'm glad it's not a useful product for you, because they deserve to be boycotted for that move.

2. I'm glad you found a philosophy that helped you through such a difficult time-- I'm putting that quote about disgrace in my toolbox. I've found Buddhist writings to be similarly helpful-- particularly Thich Nhat Hahn's books. Well, not really similarly-- I haven't yet been required to face down the level of trauma you have. But it's good to know there are philosophies that are adequate to the task.

3. I can understand how being able to use your actual body would come to be fast, and in many ways superior to prosthetic replacements-- I'm picturing how often I might prefer to use hands to tweezers, and how what you describe might be similar. And having to switch out your egg-holding fingers for your bottle opening fingers (a theoretical I'd thought of) could just become a massive pain in the ass.

My father's best friend lost all but his pinky on his left hand (his dominant hand), in a meat-grinder. It seemed to me he could still cup his palm around things. Maybe it just looked like he could.

4. And I'm full of impotent rage at the poor standard of care that left you at risk for your accident-- the sort of thinking that doesn't recognize that a patient could recognize the deterioration of her illness, that doesn't recognize that mental illness puts more that the mind itself in danger. And at the sort of society that leaves you to shift for yourself in the wake of something like that-- though you sound like you're managing admirably.

5. And and now I want to design a costume that would let you look in the mirror and feel beautiful.

[charlou]

apophenia, your posts were about as far from tl;dr as could be-- compelling reading.

Very much so.

And I'm full of impotent rage at the poor standard of care that left you at risk for your accident-- the sort of thinking that doesn't recognize that a patient could recognize the deterioration of her illness, that doesn't recognize that mental illness puts more that the mind itself in danger. And at the sort of society that leaves you to shift for yourself in the wake of something like that-- though you sound like you're managing admirably.

Yes ... and that impotence ... is there a way to turn it to useful action, to strive for change .. for greater social empathy and concern, and more appropriate, caring responses? This, recognition and talking about it, is an important starting point ...

And and now I want to design a costume that would let you look in the mirror and feel beautiful.

Apophenia is beautiful ... her writing reflects that.

I, too, so wish you were able to see that in yourself, Apophenia.