Thanks to all.
The kensington Expert Track ball arrived today. Crazy Michigan
no-fault... It had to be ordered via a doctors order for workstation
modification and then through an approved medical supply house that
could only order it directly from Kensington...
But it is here and I CAN work with it left-handed. This keeps my right
hand on the keyboard with less stress not havi\ng to reach for a
right-hand mouse (I just could not control a regular mouse left-handed).
I'm very "right-handed", but trained myself to use a regular mouse left-handed
so I could use my right hand to take notes and manipulate documentation. This
was back in days of X-terminals, so print documents (X11, IDL, Matlab, etc)
ran to 1000's of pages bound in multiple thick "books".
I tried setting a "left-hand" mode, but because terminals were shared among
several users, it was better to train myself to use a right-hand configured mouse
so other users could just move the mouse to the right side.
Then I broke my left shoulder and had several months with a sling and 9 months
of PT. As soon as the sling came off I went back to left-hand mousing because
it helped keep the shoulder moving. For the first couple years I had to be diligent
about exercising the shoulder to avoid losing range of motion. 30 years later
it works as well or better than the one I didn't break.
This is going to make a difference in my work and my recovery.
I have helped a number of colleagues work around various injuries. We
accumulated an assortment of pointing devices (keyboards with laptop style
touchpads, Wacom Bamboo touchpads, trackballs, etc.) for people to test
drive, but there were problems finding good device drivers for older devices
on the 3 OS's we used most recently (Windows, linux, macOS). It would
be nice to have some charitable organization maintain a collection of current
pointing devices so they could lend then out to people recovering from injuries
and to help people with long-term issues figure out what works for them. The difficulty
most people face in finding suitable devices only slows recovery.
BTW, I am taking my first steps without a cane and am 'graduating' to
out-patient PT for the walking. But the dislocated shoulder has another
3 weeks to go..
Hope your recovery continues to progress well.
My broken shoulder had a metal bracket with screws and wires for about 6
months while the bone healed, with PT for a total of 9 months. The PT was
painful, but I was advised to recover from PT with light exercise (a brisk 20-30 min
walk) to keep blood circulating and ending at a good coffee shop. This was
effective in reducing pain and maintaining gains from PT. In addition to 1 on 1
PT there was a shoulder clinic with group sessions in a heated pool that was
time well spent (I live in Canada, so all this only cost me the price of the coffees).
Take care