My left hand is slowly giving up the ghost. This would be fine if I wasn’t left-handed! So I am learning to mainly use my right hand to pick up the slack. The advantage of living in a right-handed world is that I am already prepared for this and can manage a lot but I am an artistic/crafty person and I now need to learn my old tricks and habits with the opposite hand. Let me assure you, it has been an interesting journey!

I loved art at school. I would emerge through the door of the classroom in a cloudy haze, like I had emerged onto the stage of Stars In Their Eyes. That was a good indication that I had been using chalk. The other indication would be the chalk fingerprints smeared up my face!

I will admit, my passion for creating art had dwindled somewhat as the years after school passed, though my appreciation never died. But as soon as my left hand started weakening, creating art was the one thing that I missed and I constantly punished myself for not using the ability whilst I had it.

Then one day, Super Sarah said the simple words “why don’t you try using your right hand?” and I have never looked back since! With her endless patience and support, I have started to create new masterpieces. Some of these masterpieces do look like they were created by an 8 year old at school but never once has she suggested that we stick them on the fridge, for which I am eternally grateful!

My first exploration was to colour in shapes in a Drawing, Doodling and Colouring book that I had purchased for a whole £5 through the book club at work. My right hand awkwardly clutched the pen, positioning carefully over the page and then rather shakily, I touched the tip to the page. I had succeeded! There was now a colourful full stop in the middle of the shape! Now to colour in the rest of it…

 

It took a little while to master, but I finished the colouring of this page (it became quite addictive!) and at roughly the same time, the rest of the country realised how much fun it was to colour-in as a grown up! By the time this page was complete, I had mastered the holding of a pen with my right hand. No longer did I look so awkward that it could be painful, I could now pick up the pen, hold the tip of it between my thumb and two fingers and contentedly scribble away.

I wondered if I could manage the challenge on the next page which was to draw some shapes and colour them in. I decided it would be safer to use a pencil for this; something I could rub out if I made a mistake. Poor Super Sarah did not need a tantrum from her 30 year old wife after she went out the lines on her colouring-in project with pen!

This was successful so I started to become more ambitious. My right hand was growing stronger, hell I could do anything! So off to Hobbycraft we went. As it was nearly Christmas at this point, I gathered some gift ideas and we left the shop with a big grin on our faces (this often happens when a crafty person leaves Hobbycraft, just to warn you!).

Another project that I tried at school that had been on my mind is mosaicing. On my Christmas list was a gift box put together by Kirsty Allsop which showed you how to mosaic. With my previous experience, and some recent purchases in the post-Christmas sale at Hobbycraft, I decided to give this a go. My first project was a delightful little mirror! I prepared and organised my little plastic tiles and with Super Sarah’s help, I laid the adhesive onto the piece of wood. Out of nowhere, Super Sarah produces these brilliant little tweezers that I could use to pick up the tiny tiles with my right hand (another great tantrum prevented!).

Slowly but surely, I laid the tiles into a beautiful pattern, scattered some glitter, and my project was complete! I was hooked! Another visit to Hobbycraft was needed and a few more projects purchased however we both knew that this would not sustain me for long.

The following Sunday, we eagerly visited our local car-boot sale, eyes peeled for crockery to smash! We found bits and pieces that we liked and again, left with big smiles on our face. It was quite difficult at the car-boot sale though as the owners of the plates that we bought spent a lot of time carefully wrapping them in newspaper, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them not to worry about this as I was going to smash it all up when I got home! I still feel a bit guilty about it…

Whilst I haven’t used our crockery yet, Super Sarah did bring home part of a tree-trunk one day (yes, I know what you are thinking) and it is currently sitting in our bath tub. We have grand plans for this tree trunk – it will soon become a beautiful mini coffee table for our corner sofa and it will have a unique mosaic top. A bespoke piece of furniture!

My final venture with my right hand recently has been a dot-to-dot. I was inspired by my friend’s daughter, who was very enthusiastically hunting through an activity book we gave to her as a gift, for these puzzles. I bought myself a grown-up dot-to-dot book (if you can call it grown-up) and set myself a new challenge! Each puzzle is 1000 dots so I really had to commit to this.

My right hand completed its pre-dot stretches, gripped the pencil and got to work! I connected those dots in a fever, so happy was I that each line flowed beautifully. After the first evening, I sat back and inspected my work. Over 200 dots connected. Wait…only 200?! This was going to take a little while! After roughly a week, my work was complete and I looked down at a beautiful cat.

MS is tricky, and you can lose a lot of functioning in parts of your body, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to do things differently. I am so damn stubborn that I find ways to do things that I want to. Even if I have to learn to do things backwards, I will win!