Sunday Stroke Survival ~ Ebola and Elbowla Viruses

Every news carrier globally is talking about the Ebola virus. The fact is, it has been around for centuries and it kills most leaving very few survivors. This is covered fairly completely on the web, television, newspaper, and radio. So if you want more info, please go to one of those outlets.


Today, I'm talking about another virus that strike far greater numbers and can be just as deadly when trying to put your best foot forward, the Elbowla virus...typing as with one's elbows. It is otherwise known as typos and grammatical errors that run rampant in documents.

Your mama may have told you to keep your elbows off the dinner table, but elbows don't belong on your keyboard either.

Now I have a couple excuses for my having this disease 1) brain damage because of my strokes, and typing with one hand tied behind my back. (not really tied, but paralyzed.) Still they are just excuses for sloppiness on my part.

My letters twist sideways and change position too.

February of last year was the challenge I made for myself to type one handed 45 WPM. I failed. My best was 40 WPM. Then I went and had a second stroke dropping my WPM down to 30.

This stroke I lost most of my reading comprehension without reading a sentence four or five times to make sure I understand what my eyes and brain are telling me is correct. A worsening of my dyslexia, or at least I forgot all the helpful cues I had established to read letters and numbers. I was put back to square one again, but coupled with the loss of comprehension makes reading for pleasure too much work. Forget about writing. Although this blog seems fairly well thought out and cohesive it takes me days to accomplish it.

But just like my physical and occupational therapies, if you don't use it you lose it, or at the very least, you don't get it back. For example, the word "back" in the previous sentence, I typed as "cakb" because that's the way my mind told my fingers to type it. Of course, I got the angry, squiggly line telling at me, "That ain't right, stupid!"

Most times, Elbowla virus strikes when a person doesn't know how to type, or is adjusting to a new way to type.... with one hand or a new keyboard. Or even typing while distracted.  At least that's when Elbowla hit me worse when I had two working hands. No wonder texting while driving is illegal. I couldn't do it with two working hands.

I'm a four-finger and a thumb typist, but that's better than a two-finger hunt and peck typist, isn't it? I dunno. I'd go back to the two-finger hunt and peck, if only I could. Then, the size of the keyboard wouldn't matter. So these days the Elowla virus has hit my keyboard. Part because of brain cell damage and part because I'm distracted. A focused effort will fix the problem as it would for anyone else. Focusing is hard work, but I get by. That's why I can write this blog as a literate person. This is my rehab exercise and my curing the Elbowla virus.

Nothing is impossible with determination.

Monday Mailbox ~ Typing One Handed Revisited

It's Monday again and time to answer your questions.
With the influx of new readers from the stroke communities my previous blog about Typing with One-Hand Tied Behind Your Back has received almost 500 hits. The blog itself has reached 5,000 hits since January.

Most of the questions in my email account were evenly tied between the typing blog and praise for my Platform blogs. Since I had already revisited platforms it was time to visit typing again.

With the advent of my stroke I went from typing with two hands averaging speed roughly between 95WPM to 120WPM which was extremely helpful in producing six books for sale last year. I could type as fast as my mind could create. Not only had I received cognitive damage, which I've mentioned the struggle many times here, but I also lost the use of my right hand.

I might mention here that the kernels for stories and characters never stopped just my ability to get them all down in an understandable way stopped. The creative juices are still flowing. I'm thankful for this blessing, but there are limits to what I accomplish. Last year I set a goal to type one-handed 45WPM corrected by the end of February. I'm only managing 40WPM sometimes and it is March. Did I fail? Nope. I set the goal too high. Am I going to quit? No on my life. I passed my typing class way back when by typing a meer 60 WPM and work my way up to 120WPM. I'll increase my spped with practice.

When I first started typing with one hand, it was more a hunt and peck type of typing. My fingers of my left hand didn't know where ALL the keys were. I had to learn a new finger position to type one handed. I searched the internet for ways to touch type one-handed. I'll admit all the sites wanted to sell me a program to teach me.

I looked at all kinds of specialty keyboards. Some I'd have to learn a whole new key system. You might be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but it takes forever to unlearn and relearn. The keyboards were sky-high in price and comparable to a new brace or splint. I just couldn't justify the cost when I was working towards getting the use of my hand back. It would become almost useless as the dozens of braces, splints, crutches, and other must haves for injuries in the past. Just collecting dust in a closet or in the attic.

Getting back to the keyboards, I hit upon a brilliant idea. Putting away my ergonomic split keyboard for future use. I broke out the original white keyboard which came with my computer. I took the chart above and took markers and colored my keys to match the picture above. It was slow going at first as with anything new you try. At first it was still the hunt and peck method but I was using all my fingers effectively now.

But I ran into a problem. My hand from pinky tip to thumb tip measures six inches. I have little hands and dainty fingers. My ring finger wears a size four ring but needs a five to get past the knuckle. A standard QWERTY keyboard measures eleven and a half to twelve  inches across. It was just too big to reach the keys without taking my fingers out of position from the home keys.

I started searching for a smaller keyboard. This is what I bought.  It's the Gear Head 89-key keyboard that's just 6.2 inches wide. A Windows mini keyboard that accounted for a 20WPM jump in my typing speed. No it doesn't have a keypad which accounts for fifteen of the missing keys off my 104-key keyboard. Yes I bought a separate key pad because most standard keyboards have the key pad on the right side of the keyboard which is very awkward for a left handed typist anyhow. AND it was cheap! Less than $20 for both.

"But Jo, instead of buying all these new things wouldn't it be easier to use you laptop?" Yes, it would be but my laptop shuts down after twenty minutes because of heat sensor issues.
"But they make fans to go under them." Yes and over the last three years I've bought seven of those. The problem with most laptops is the fan inside of them that is supposed to keep the CPU (central processing unit- the brains) cool are too small to do the job. I know, I know some of you have laptops which will run all day, but I bought mine when it was relatively a new thing. It should be replaced, but right now I've got more important things vying for my dollars.

It has taken a lot of time punching away at these keys to build my speed up to 40WPM. As you can see, the typing has gotten better. It used to take me an hour to type out a simple email or less than a two hundred-word blog. Today this has taken  less than half an hour for 800 words that includes searching for copyright free pictures. That's progress.

Keep writing and loving the Lord.

Sunday Stroke Happenings and the Indie Author

Typing one-handed is a challenge, but is doable. It just takes some finagling. But some things on the keyboard is more challenging than others like pressing <ctr, alt, del> at the same time.

Things that normally takes two hands are near impossible. I say "near impossible" because they honestly can be done with a little ingenuity.  I have figure out how to do the little <shift and mouse click> to check all the boxes in my e-mails to delete multiple e-mails at the same time. But I have finagled a way to do it if I place the cursor and mouse in the right configuration. Not so difficult ...try it. Figuring out how to use the shift key and some others while typing was a trip down the yellow brick road in stretching the fingers to accommodate the movement.

My typing speed has grown to a whopping twenty WPM corrected. It has taken me three months to get to this speed using the "f,g,h,j" as home keys. That's longer than it took me to learn how to type with two hands at forty-five WPM back in the dark ages when I first learned to type on a manual typewriter. I remember starting slow and then picking up the speed to sixty, then eighty with two hands.  With one handed typing it's a bit slower but I expect to reach forty-five words a minute by Easter, if I keep practicing. It all depends on how much real life keeps me away from my computer. It's been doing that a lot of late.

Fortunately with keyboards, we have a delete key and backspace key. I've learned to highlight text to delete or change what is typed fairly quickly. Now using the keyboard and the mouse together has been problematic, but I'll figure out a way to do this to or find a way around it. Think editing manuscripts where you move chunks around. So eventually, I'll get my novels back into Amazon Kindle.

I'm always trying new stuff without adaptive equipment. Think of the pleasure I'll have when I break down and buy it to make life easier. My girls asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told them go in together and get me an adaptive cutting board. Cooking has always been a passion of mine. Not that I haven't learned to cut vegetables and cheeses, and spread butter on toast without it, but it will be easier and faster.

The good Lord knows, I've spent a small fortune on quality knives over the past thirty odd years and to not use them would be a crying shame.  Although the Rocker T Knife is excellent for small quantities, I miss really cooking for a crowd. This was the first 4th of July and Thanksgiving I haven't cooked or prepped large quantities of foods for the generational get together of our family. If this is your first time to my site, on average, a family get together in my family is fifty to three hundred and fifty people depending whose coming. I missed it terribly. Even though my sister did the cooking and she is a good cook, it lacked the panache style but a good time was had by all.

I now am consistently writing on an 8th grade level( standard for novels and non-advanced levels in nonfiction) which is a far cry from the 4th grade I was writing at. Yeahhhh! I'm a teenie bopper once again. <g>  I'm still struggling with spelling and grammar. Can't win them all. Whoever thought I'd be happy to reach a teenage level in writing at my age? So the book is coming along slowly. Like I said in my pastor's blog, God is teaching me patience. And boy, it's a hard lesson to learn!

I haven't given up on my right arm, but realizing my initial expectations were a bit optimistic and am figuring out how to do without until I get it back. Every day the shoulder gets a little bit more movement. It's taken some really hard work to get it to where it was before. Working the elbow is difficult with the bicep muscle weakened from the Botox injections, but I'm managing both active (moving it without assistance) and passive movement (with the help of my left arm or somebody else). The wrist and fingers still nothing. I'm still wearing the splints and braces to manage the tone I've got in my right side, and fighting an up hill battle, but drawing my sword and yelling "Charge!" as I move onward with my life.

So what battles are you facing?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.