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Arthritis Demands Savvy Solutions
I’ve learned to adjust to my unreliable hands
No longer can I simply walk up to my husband with a bottle or can in hand. He’d know what to do without words passing between us. Open the damn thing.
It’s been almost a year now since he departed.
Loss isn’t only about living without companionship and love but also about the practical everyday things one takes for granted after sharing a life for close to forty years.
Like a man to peel the potatoes. Potatoes challenge my arthritic hands as I battle to hold onto the peeler. Now I only buy baby potatoes, scrub them, and boil them in their skins. (In case you were wondering — I can’t cook baked potatoes because I don’t have an oven.)
After a few months of living alone, I needed to restock items such as peanut butter, marmalade, mayonnaise, etc. I could open the marmalade and mayonnaise because they have twist-off caps. All you do is tap the edges against a wall, turning as you go, until you hear that popping sound as air enters the vacuum in the bottle. It's not a problem.
Peanut butter is not so simple because though it’s a twist-off cap, it’s attached to a plastic ring beneath it, as you can see in the image below. I don’t have the massive strength to twist and break those plastic…
