Well, I went and messed myself up really badly a couple of weeks ago! Riding around on my electric bike, I hit a patch of gravel in the dark that I could not see and immediately face planted and broke both my hands.😱

My left hand broke my fourth and fifth fingers, but my right hand I shattered the wrist completely. My surgeon said he had never seen a worse wrist fracture. It is all being held together by pins and plates at the moment, and it seems it will probably be a couple of months before the cast can come off and we can see what kind of mobility I still have.

I spent a few days in the hospital, then moved to a rehab center for about a week while both arms were completely in casts, but on Tuesday, I had my first orthopedist appointment and he felt that the left hand would be OK out of the cast now. I have a couple of pins in the fingers, but the hand seems to have fairly good motion.

The right hand, on the other hand (!), that one is going to be quite a while before we know what I have left with it. 🥺😢

However, I had my helmet and gloves and safety gear all on during the accident, so other than just some scrapes, the rest of me is in good shape.

I got home from the rehab facility a couple of days ago and I’m getting used to living life with one hand for now! It is definitely a learning curve! I play once a week in a trio with a sax player and a girl singer, we run tracks for backing, so I felt I would be able to rejoin them yesterday (Thursday). I did not have any opportunity to try my left hand out at home, so I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that I COULD actually play a little bit with it on the gig, which I thought all I would be doing would be running the tracks and singing lol.

Anyway, this brings me to my main point. If you just had a left hand, how well would you do? I guess I am about to find out for a few months lol! But if you need inspiration (I sure do!) Here is a video of Yuja Wang playing Ravel’s Concerto for left-handed piano player. He wrote this Concerto in 1930, commissioned by a concert pianist who had lost his right arm in World War I. It just goes to show how much you can do with half of what God gave you!

Mind you, I am really hoping nobody ever comes up and requests this one! Brown eyed girl I can probably handle. This one, not so much!

Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers while I recuperate from this, and I will keep you posted about what you can do with just one hand lol!

https://youtu.be/ZbEtk1kdYx4?si=pF8FU2VGSXJKywPC

(if you want to skip straight to the piano playing, it starts at about 2:30)