Arthritis turns lovely fingers into useless gnarled stumps

Humans are addicted fidgeters but if you don’t value your hands, arthritis could one day turn them into twisted, painful ginger roots.

“You never value your hands enough,” says the great grandmother who had is now crippled with arthritis. Picture: iStock

WHY WE NEED MORE THOUHTFUL URBAN DESIGN

WE ALL NEED TO BE A BIT MORE ROBUST

“Look at my hands,” says a great grandmother I know whose once long, lovely fingers are crippled with arthritis, twisted by the inflammation. “Look like blasted ginger roots. I can’t play the piano any more, hold cards, wear my rings. Take care of your hands.”

Yet I’m not quite sure how you do that. On waking, though, I now feel the tension in my hands that has clenched in the night with restless dreams, so find that the first thing I do subconsciously – recalling those painful ginger roots – is stretch them wide, slip them flat under the pillow to reverse the action of our daily work pecking at keyboards and smartphones.

Bus stop, peak hour, grey sky, workday. As the traffic crawls along this mess of roadworks, there’s time to observe those waiting for the council bus into town.

At the shelter are 11 people, young, old, male and female, everyone’s head bowed in honour of the small machine in their hands. Nobody looking up, thumbs scrolling. Sometimes I think you could invade this country and no one would notice – until someone posted about it on Facebook.

Kathleen Noonan

Humans are addicted fidgeters. It’s easy to blame the smartphone phenomenon but it is not a new thing. Humans are a species that fidgets, says Darian Leader in his book Hands: What we do with them and why, whether with worry beads, rosary beads, cigarettes, snuff boxes, handkerchiefs or, in the 18th century, with a fan – so popular that by 1720 there were, incredibly, 300 different fan-makers in London and a fan tax too.

I’ve interviewed enough creative people to know there is a complex thing at play when you explore our hand-brain connection.

Most talk about doing their best creative thinking when their hands are busy with a manual task – cooking, knitting, gardening, raking, kneading dough – as if the act of keeping hands busy sidelines that sensible “thinking” part of the brain, so the playful cousin can come out to play.

A Canadian musician I interviewed at Woodford one year was a fearsome guitar player. Slim and petite, she says, “here, feel that thumb”, and her right thumb was so much stronger than her left, like that crazy-as-a-cut-snake Tom Robbins’ 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, starring the girl who capitalises on her enormous thumbs by becoming a hitchhiker: “There isn’t a jar in the world I can’t open”.

She says she needs a guitar in her hands, fingers noodling away on nothing, to write good song lyrics.

A few years ago, I smashed a finger in a weights machine. (A clear message from the universe to give up such foolish undertakings and lie down and read a book.)

The right pointer finger was fractured in seven places, yet it was pointless having invasive surgery to have pins and plates inserted, so it was bandaged up and allowed to heal. Somewhere I have read that each finger has three consecutive bones, “like train cars”. Well, my train cars had suffered one hell of a derailment.

I thought this was disastrous – that writing, typing, word arranging would be impossible. Yet within days the rest of my hand and brain had remarkably adapted and compensated. The middle finger took over all pointer finger duties. Even today the middle finger dominates.

We carry ghosts of our injuries for life.

“You never value your hands enough,” says the great grandmother with arthritis, who had, in her day, beautiful handwriting.

Years ago, shocked by the lack of ability of her grandchildren to write in cursive, she embarked on a sneaky plan – for them to write out a short poem of their choice each week when they came to visit.

She figured they’d be able to write cursive in a world where penmanship is out the window. But that’s not what was really behind it.

She believed cursive writing assisted in training the brain to integrate visual and tactile information, and fine motor dexterity. Knowing the power of the bribe, she rewarded them with chocolate. Or $10 for the older ones.

I love a subversive, hands-on grandma.

AND ANOTHER THING …

I’m driving along out bush the other day, a bit tired, an hour’s drive ahead, then switch on Radio National and there is a cracker of a program on the centenary of World War I on Rear Vision.

I was home in a flash, knowing more Australian history than absorbed in 12 years at school, thinking, not for the first time, thank god for the ABC.

Former National Party leader Tim Fischer, diagnosed with acute leukaemia recently, yet still talking trains, rural Australia and politics, summed it up nicely in a recent interview: “Regional Australia would be Siberia without the ABC. In all its manifestations, whether it’s Country Hour, whether it’s Landline and the raft of other programs of excellence.

Perhaps the ideological warriors should tone it down a bit. Should listen to all that the ABC for its dynamic professionalism is offering. I salute the ABC.”

Now, our new PM is quite fond of having a swing at the ABC whenever he hops off the ghost bus he pretended to be travelling in last month while actually flying in his VIP jet. Maybe he needs to ring up Fischer for some advice on all things regional … and authenticity. Someone should stick it on a T-shirt (or maybe a baseball cap): “Regional Australia would be Siberia without the ABC”.

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