Five simple accessibility tips for one-handed living

Below I have outlined five simple accessibility tips for one-handed or one-armed living, for when you don’t have as many functioning limbs as you would perhaps prefer. I have survived one elbow surgery in the past, and I am currently recovering from surgery to my elbow, wrist, and thumb.¹ These are the most helpful suggestions that I wish I had known about for my first surgery, as well as for all the intervening time as I’ve been dealing with hand and arm pain.

If you are looking for help adapting to a more permanent disability, there are many excellent creators out there with limb differences who have shared their own advice and resources.

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1. Arrange your living and sleeping space around your healthy arm

What side of the bed do you sleep on? Do you have a nightstand beside you? Do you use your good arm or your bad arm to reach it? If you are preparing for surgery or have an injury that will take out one arm for a while, I recommend taking the time to swap your set-up to the other side of the bed. If your room is arranged around the less usable side, it is frustrating to have to stand up or twist to try to grab things with your good arm. Plus, doing so can just put you at risk of more injury, especially if you are living in a hypermobile body like mine with shitty connective tissue. Ask a friend to help you move the nightstand, or work with your partner to swap sides. It might take some time to get used to, but it’s worth it.

Make similar changes anywhere you spend your time. Where do you typically sit when watching TV or reading? Can you swap or rearrange so that wherever you place your water bottle, phone chargers etc. is available on your good side? At your desk, do you have a mouse that uses your good hand?² What side is the lamp on? As you go throughout your day, try to note what you are using your painful or soon to be disabled side for, and consider adjusting to make your daily living space more accessible to you.

2. Put products in pump bottles

If you only have one usable hand, opening jars or tubs or bottles to use everything from soap, to toothpaste, to under eye serum is surprisingly difficult. Even if you managed to get it open, you realize you then don’t have another hand to pour it into. Putting products into pump bottles makes them immediately accessible one-handed.

Where possible and within my budget, I do like to throw money at problems. In this case, this looks like buying products that already come in pump bottles, rather than transferring all of your current products into new bottles. Below are a few of my favorites.

I don’t know why on Amazon you can only get the CeraVe moisturizing cream with the pump top combined with the cleanser, but if you have a Costco membership, you can find a two pack of just the moisturizer.

For everything else, here are the types of pump bottles that I purchased and what I recommend them for based on my experience. These ones come with a little funnel so I didn’t have to purchase that separately.

3. Dycem nonslip grip for everything else

My God where has this been all my life?! I love this roll of blue sticky stuff that is saving my life. And my sanity.

My occupational therapist introduced me to Dycem. The idea is simple – this material provides a nonslip grip either between something you’re trying to open and the counter, or between the lid and your hand, or both. The additional friction provides the resistance to reduce your own effort needed. I found I can do pretty much everything with a combination of small-ish squares about 3″ x 3″, and a larger sheet maybe 8″ x 8″.

I’ve also used smaller pieces of it to help me grip things that you’re supposed to peel to open. Like grabbing the edge of a transparent film of a resealable cover on cottage cheese or prosciutto, both of which are critical to my survival.

I have even recorded a video for your convenience, demonstrating how I use this to open medication bottles with safety caps. This methodology works for opening most containers.

You can also ask your pharmacy to put your prescriptions in a more accessible container without the child safety-proofing.

For larger containers, I wrap the larger sheet of Dycem and place the item between my legs to brace it. For smaller bottles that need some finesse or need to be pulled up to open, use a small sheet for the lid at the same time.

4. Make medication easily accessible

If you take at least 20 quadrillion pills a day like I do, you will never have time for anything else if you have to open the bottles, one handed on a daily basis. I don’t have any perfect solution for this, but here is what I do. I use the Pill Pack Pharmacy combined with a large capacity daily pill organizer. Pill Pack will sort your medications into small packets for each dose. I take pills twice a day, so I have two little time-stamped and dated sachets with a handful of my meds. However, pill pack doesn’t work for all of my medications. Some OTC supplements and medications I take aren’t available through them reliably. I also have several meds with a weird dosage where I have to cut the pills in half some as needed meds.

Sorting and organizing medications

For medications that aren’t convenient for Pill Pack, I use large pill organizers that I fill up once a week. In anticipation of surgery, I also pulled out the one I used for travel, so I could prepare two weeks of meds. I ask my husband to help me fill it up so it takes less time. It still takes the two of us a solid 15-20 minutes, but at least I only have to do it once a week instead of every day.

Keep urgently needed meds by your bedside

Right after surgery, when I needed painkillers every three hours, my husband (a nurse) used small medication dosage cups to make it easier for me to handle small pills with only one hand. He would place my next dose in a medication cup next to me in my side table organizer. When I inevitably knocked it over, it would remain contained in a place where I could still get to it without help.

I’ve kept using them because I find it easier to take pills from the cups than my hand or other containers. I used to just rip open the pill pack bag and dump it directly in my mouth, or open a section of my pill organizer and tip the whole thing into my mouth. While decidedly ungraceful, this method mostly worked fine, except for the occasional fumble and thus escaped rogue pills. Since my feline gremlins have no sense of self-preservation, this induced a panicked search across a dusty tile floor.

5. Protect your healthy hand

If you are unable to use one of your hands, your “good “hand will get a lot of use. The last thing you need is to aggravate a chronic issue on your good/better side, or develop a new injury. My advice for this is to take your time when doing things, especially movements that are awkward or unfamiliar. I am not a patient person by nature, so this is difficult for me. But it’s important to move deliberately and think about the ergonomics of your movement. OSHA has a guide for hand and arm, economic safety, but you can also find plenty of resources from physical and occupational therapist on YouTube. I encourage you to ask your own providers about this in context to your specific circumstance.

For a lot of hypermobile humans, it makes sense to protect your good side with a brace of some sort. Here are a few that I’ve used or have been recommended to me by my own providers. I have to get them on and off using my teeth, but that seems to work OK for me.

If you have other suggestions for navigating the world with only one functional arm, please comment or contact me.

Footnotes

1. As a result, I am typing with dictation, and correcting with one hand. There are certainly typos in this article. I won’t apologize for them. You can deal. I’m doing my best.
2. For anyone prone to repetitive stress injuries or with chronic pain, I highly recommend learning to mouse with your non-dominant hand. Once you do, you can swap your mouse hand throughout the week, every few weeks, or just depending on which side hurts the worst. I promise that learning to mouse with your non-dominant hand doesn’t require supernatural ambidextrous skill. Just hide your dominant hand mouse for about a week, and you’ll adapt surprisingly quickly.
3. Not a typo. I am simply a Latin lover [Second declension neuter].

Disclaimer: While I am technically a doctor, I am not a medical professional, so none of my content should be considered medical advice. If you are experiencing symptoms that relate to the topics discussed, please consult with your healthcare professional(s).