Raised Hands Hands Down

My hand hurts. It has been a couple of weeks since I fell and my hand still hurts. Actually it seems to be hurting worse. Maybe it is the cold. The part that hurts is one of the metacarpal bones, the one below my pinky finger. It is the end of the metacarpal closest to the wrist. I am so thankful it is my left hand, but I am amazed at how much I actually use the left hand.

I am thinking about my hand, and that leads to thinking about all hands. This leads, of course, to Googling the word hand. I found some interesting stuff:

1. One out of six disabling work injuries involve the fingers, most often due to the finger striking or being struck against a hard surface.

2. One fourth of athletic injuries involve the hand and wrist.

3. Children under the age of six are at the greatest risk for crushing or burning injuries of the hand.

4. fingers are special, because there are no muscles inside the fingers. The muscles which bend the finger joints are located in the palm and up in the mid forearm, and are connected to the finger bones by tendons, which pull on and move the fingers like the strings of a marionette.

5. The wrinkles on the back of the finger knuckles are actually dimples, and mark areas where the skin is attached to the tendon beneath the skin.

6. Finger joints only have wrinkles and creases if the joint moves. If a finger joint stops moving, the creases eventually flatten out.

7. One out of six of congenital anomalies recorded on birth statistics involve the upper extremities.

8. White children are four times more likely than black children to be born with webbed fingers.

9. Black children are ten times more likely than white children to be born with extra fingers.

10. Each hand contains (plus or minus... everyone is different, and everyone counts these things differently...)
o 29 major and minor bones (many people have a few more).
o 29 major joints.
o At least 123 named ligaments.
o 34 muscles which move the fingers and thumb:

17 in the palm of the hand, and

18 in the forearm.
o 48 named nerves: 3 major nerves.

24 named sensory branches.

21 named muscular branches.
o 30 named arteries and nearly as many smaller named branches.

11. The muscles which power the fingers are strong - strong enough for some people to climb vertical surfaces supporting their entire weight at times by a few fingertips. The muscles which accomplish this feat are stronger than you might imagine, for the biomechanics of the hand require that the force generated by the muscles which bend the fingertips must be at least four times the pressure which is produced at the fingertips.

12. The thumb is controlled by
o 9 individual muscles, which are controlled by
o all 3 major hand nerves and moves in such a complex fashion that there are 6 separate descriptive terms just for particular directions of movement of one thumb joint - the basal joint, at the base of the thumb.

13. Contrary to popular opinion, humans - homo sapiens - are not the only primates posessing opposable thumbs. Chimanzees and monkees can oppose the thumb to the index digit. What makes the human hand unique in the animal kingdom is the ability of the small and ring fingers to rotate across the palm to meet the thumb, owing to a unique flexibility of the carpometacarpal joints of these fingers, down in the middle of the palm. This is referred to as "ulnar opposition" and adds unparalleled grip, grasp, and torque capability to the human hand. This feature developed after the time of Lucy, a direct human ancestor, who lived about 3.2 million years ago.
14. Structurally, fingernails are modified hairs.

15. The skin on the palm side of the hand and fingers is unique for these reasons and more:
o No hair (the medical term is glabrous).
o Fingerprints.
o Usually neither color nor the ability to tan.
o Tough and durable, yet sensitive.
o Anchored down to the bones beneath through an intermediate layer of fascia. This arrangement keeps the skin of the palm from sliding around like a rubber glove when we use our hands to grip and twist.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I see the hand as a tool of my art. It is a tool of my mind as well. Without my hands I would have great difficulty in communicating, and it would be almost impossible to express the emotions and thoughts that define me to myself, and to those around me.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. Leonardo da Vinci