Thus Spake The Diabetic Cyclist
I am speaking this article out rather than typing it out, and it’s one of the strangest experiences of my life.
That’s because I had a crash on my bike on December 1, 2021 and subsequently suffered a fractured hand. The fracture required surgery, which I had on December 17. The surgeon said that a normal recovery for this type of break is about 12 weeks.
We’ll see if it works out that way.
In the meantime, I want to get used to dictating my thoughts rather than typing them out since I believe that will be faster than trying to type with one hand.
It’s an alien thing for me to produce content this way instead of being hunched over my Mac keyboard. I’m hopeful I’ll make a full recovery and be typing away again sooner rather than later, but if things don’t work out with my healing, which is the surgeon says is a possibility, I’ll have to learn a new way of doing things. And this is a small window into that.
So I’m using Apple’s built-in dictation software to see if I can learn how to express myself this way rather than through typing. This software is far from perfect, but so far it’s actually better than I expected. If this works well enough, I will eventually upgrade to Dragon software, which is purpose built for dictation.
This is new territory for me, and it’s scary, as most anything that’s brand new. I don’t know what the future will bring with my hand. I don’t know if I’ll get is used to working like this as I did in the past by typing everything out.
But one of the great things about human means is that we adapt. Adapting is what I am trying to do right now. This is a baby step, but as the old saying goes, “A journey of 1,000 miles…”
Doing things this way also opens up my mind to the wider world of people with permanent disabilities. I’ve never cared very much about the disability features included in Windows and Mac software, because it just didn’t apply to me. That’s my narrow-mindedness at work.
I’ve come to understand how important this functionality is, which gives me greater empathy toward those who are not as fortunate as I have always been to have complete use of all their limbs. Anything that does that — anything that helps me understand my fellow man better — makes me a better person.
It’s also difficult to have to rely on other people for so many things. My wife and children are helping me do basic stuff, things I’ve always taken for granted. I don’t take them for granted anymore.
That’s also a good thing — it makes me appreciate life to a greater degree than I ever have before. Appreciation is truly one of the greatest things that we can experience as human beings. Gratitude stems from appreciation, and gratitude helps us to be more contented with our circumstances. Being more contented means being happier with our lives.
I have more appreciation and more gratitude than I had before December 1. So does that mean I’m happy that the accident happened? Not yet.
But maybe I’ll get there sometime in the future, and may be sooner rather than later.
Life throws us curveballs all the time. Learning to hit them is an acquired skill.