Loss of a hand is more than loss of typing skills.

We think with our hands.  Don’t believe me?  Just try looking at something closely.  Move your face reeeally close.  NO TOUCHING!  Can’t quite make it out?  Now pick it up and hold it at the same distance.  Suddenly you can “see” it better.  Why?  Because we have a vast portion of our brain dedicated to manual manipulation, sensation.

It’s no coincidence than brachial plexus birth trauma usually results in retardation.  Using our hands makes us use our brains.

No other anthropoid has a hand like us.  None can make a fist.  None can hold a paint brush in the fingertips (chimps hold them like bats).  None can pluck an eyelash from another’s eye.

I think the job of a good advocate is to identify the losses, harms, expenses which come from what appears to be a “simple” injury.  To recognize the secondary injuries.  Here, to see that your client is now less safe: in a car, on a train, in an airplane.  Less safe in her home: cooking, climbing stairs (one hand for the laundry NONE for the railing).  Less able to love her man, her children: “Hold my hand, Mommy!” and the other child calls out: “Me too!”

Loss of the right hand means she can’t shake hands “normally”.  Loss of the left means she can’t cuddle a child to her breast “normally” (all humans naturally hold infants to the left side – even left-handers.  It’s not about keeping the master hand free.  It’s because the heart is on the left, and its beat calms the baby).  She can’t hold a cell phone and punch in a number with the other hand.  She can’t wash herself as well.  (Try using a nail brush without the other hand.  Try clipping your nails.)  Can’t do her hair.  Can’t scratch the OTHER arm.

And she has a hideous disfigurement.  Will she get a prosthesis?  Will her stump hurt?  Will it stay the same colour while the rest of her tans?  Or will she have multiple spares, to match the season.  When someone on the street glances at her, idly, will she THINK: “He’s looking at my missing hand”?.

Try living a week without the use of one of your hands.

Talk to a psychiatrist who deals with amputees.  Talk to a veteran.  Think about having a real American hero come testify at your trial, about the thousand and one things that the loss of a hand has meant to him.  Make sure she or he is in uniform.  With medals.  Think your jurors won’t cry?  Think defence would dare cross the veteran?  Imagine the effect of that: on these issues, your client does not have to wallow in self-pity.  The jurors will make the transference.  Defence will be stymied.

Characterising her loss in terms of typing is wholly inadequate.  Do better.  Do more.

Your Hands

– Pablo Neruda

When your hands go out,
love, toward mine,
what do they bring me flying?
Why did they stop
at my mouth, suddenly,
why do I recognize them
as if then, before,
I had touched them,
as if before they existed
they had passed over
my forehead, my waist?

Their softness came
flying over time,
over the sea, over the smoke,
over the spring,
and when you placed
your hands on my chest,
I recognized those golden
dove wings,
I recognized that clay
and that color of wheat.

All the years of my life
I walked around looking for them.
I went up the stairs,
I crossed the roads,
trains carried me,
waters brought me,
and in the skin of the grapes
I thought I touched you.
The wood suddenly
brought me your touch,
the almond announced to me
your secret softness,
until your hands
closed on my chest
and there like two wings
they ended their journey.

Read:

●     http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/hand.htm

●    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531932754922518.html

●     http://atomiumculture.eu/node/303

●     http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/origins/origins_big_brains.php