Okay, so, here’s the deal. This morning my father stuck his hand into our snow blower and cut off his thumb and the ends of two fingers on his right hand. Um. Whoops. My mother rushed him to the hospital while I stayed home and cleaned up the carnage. I got a call in the early afternoon telling me that he was in surgery. The thumb is a lost cause but they were going to see what they could do about the other two damaged fingers.

I haven’t heard anything more yet, but I got thinking about how important thumbs are, and what sort of stuff he’ll have to make adjustments to be able to do. I’ve been poking around medical supply sites and so far I think probably all he’ll really need is stuff to help with buttons/zippers/shoelaces. We could change our doorknobs to lever-style ones, but if I know my dad, he’ll think that’s a stupid idea and he’ll just get used to using his left hand. Same for opening jars and stuff like that; he won’t want gadgets to help.

He’ll have to re-learn to write, too. Either left-handed or just without his thumb. I tested it out and I can hold a pen in a way that makes it possible to write legibly with my right hand without using my thumb, but if I take my time, I can also write just about as well with my left hand. So he’ll have to figure out what he wants to do about that, too…

Anyway, I’m rambling. What I want to know is: Does anyone have any experience with anything like this? Do you personally know of good places to get these kinds of supplies? Is there anything important that he’ll need to adjust for that I’m not thinking of?