Broke my dominant arm, will be out of work for a few months. Any advice or tips to adapt to this period of one-armed life?

My first thought was a cupholder that would attach to the cast. Other useful attachments could be a phone mount and a utility hook.

Designing things like this and 3d printing them is a hobby of mine. I think it would be a fun project to take on. The best way to design it is to talk with you as the user about how you'd want it to work.

Depending on cost to mail things to where you are (I am in the US) vs what 3d printing resources you have locally (i.e. me emailing you models to print), I'd be happy to figure something out. If you are interested, please DM me and we can find a way to connect.

Indon't have tips really, just wated to encourage you. I had my dominant arm broken too and you wouln't believe how well you can actually adapt to using your second hand. I wasn't able to (learn to) write, but you can do all other things at 90% capacity. You will probably enhance your creativity as well. I'm rooting for you!

I'm 46 years old and broke my arm at the shoulder around Christmas. I got some metal in to keep it together, and can now use both hands to type, and am totally off painkillers.

I can pretty much sleep through the night now, but at first I slept with my back raised and a pillow supporting my elbow.

As I understand it, at least in my case, the sling was mosly to keep me from instinctively trying to move my arm, or bumbing it into stuff. I still needed to take it off at times, and do some basic movement. Because I failed to do that, I ended up unable to extend my elbow full, and my skin became yellow and dough-like—serious body horror stuff! But that is thankfully fixed now.

I should be more serious about physiotherapy, though. I think I should decide on some daily goals.

You can also be more serious about your media habbits, watching documentaries, more challinging movies, or deep-dive Youtube (as a leftie, I mostly like youtubers like Shaun, Contrapoints, and Innuendo Studios)

When it comes to gaming, I can recommend Vampire Survivors, a roguelike action-RGB with the gimmick that it is controlled entirely by moving with WASD. I can also liked the clones Halls of Torment (Not a pure clone as you can attack with the mouse, but it features optional auto-attack) and the less feature-rich but very stylish Ancient Witch Arena.

My big lesson is, and this sounds super corny, "mindfulness". I should have been more mindful where I was going, not having my nose in my stupid mobile phone. But I wasn't, so, broken arm. There are also all those little moment where I didn't plan ahead, and did things like putting my unbroken leftie through the t-shirt first, so it is impossible to the the right one in, or I try sitting down with without taking the few extra seconds to plan ahead.

Do you have any ambition to learn a language? Flash cards, television, movies, songs, point and click video games are all available in other languages.

My only insight is about how to use time while not physically able. Can you use a cell phone camera with one hand? Bird watching, walking, photography can be very satisfying.

Are there social clubs or hobby groups in your area that you have considered enjoying but haven't for lack of time? You could add to your friend circle and then maintain new relationships once you have your abilities back.

Edit two books I would suggest, Flow the Psychology of Optimal Experience and Bowling Alone. Both can inspire new ideas of how to spend time.

How old are you and how badly is your arm broken?

I broke my leg while I was in school doing labwork. I suppose I could (should) have taken more time off, but I pushed through. I wouldnt advocate anyone do that, it was such an exercise in frustration. I was quite fit at the time, so it was probably easier for me to physically adapt.

Although i didnt break my arm, because I had crutches I had to get creative with carrying anything anywhere. My solution was a backpack. everything had to be backpackable: tight sealing coffee mug, water bottle instead of cups, tight food containers, etc.

Not sure if your break makes a backpack possible, but possibly a messenger bag or a granny cart would serve as well. I cant share much advice on all the small manual tasks, I'm sorry.

In terms of not going crazy, I was still busy with school, but I also tried to keep active in the ways I could. I had a friend who broke their arm and had time off work, and they found peace by taking up the habit of long walks.

Wishing you all the best in your recovery.

Given you're gonna be out of work for three months, I'm assuming your situation is worse than my broken elbow, but the same principles apply. I'm gonna imagine I'm giving advice to me one year ago.

Your arm is gonna be fine. We've had skeletons for hundreds of millions of years, they're really good at putting themselves back together at this point, especially when a professional is helping guide them. I know that's not really useful advice, but it helped me to keep that in mind to avoid feeling dread at the idea of a forever nerfed right arm.

I survived almost entirely on rice a roni and boxed mac and cheese while my arm was in a sling. You probably aren't cutting vegetables, but if you want to, a mandoline helps a ton. Get an electric can opener. Keep counters clear for setting things down. That was hard for me because I'm very bad at keeping counters clear, so I had to actively remind myself that future me was going to need to set something down there at some point.

Hang your laundry on hangers instead of folding it (I still do that even after my arm healed).

I have long hair that I like to keep in a ponytail, and the second method shown in this video (about 3:40 in) is extremely easy to do. I used a non-elastic shoelace and a drawstring toggle from a laundry bag, but it worked well enough.

If you drive a manual transmission, you don't drive anymore. If you drive an automatic, driving one-handed will take some getting used to, but it's doable. If you learned on a manual and drive an automatic now, it's not a problem at all.

You aren't working, so you need to do something. Get out and walk, go to a park, play pokemon go or something. If you stay inside all the time 24/7, you're gonna regret it.

If you video game, experiment and see what games require two hands for you. There are obvious ones like most JRPGs and card games, but I found Stardew Valley fairly easy to play with one hand on a console. Baldur's Gate and Solasta would be super easy to play with one hand.

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/25273807-Single-Handed-Games/

I'm only trying to help

Welcome to the club! I broke my dominant arm in my early 40's. And the answer is BE THANKFUL it was your dominant arm. I really appreciated how quickly I learned to use my left for everything. Even chopsticks became second nature, largely because I HAD TO. So settle in. One finger death punch on Steam is a cheap thrill and can be played with a single hand on the mouse. You'll get pretty fast with that off hand at everything. Everything ;)

And then it'll go away. The casts will come off, and you'll gradually have the use of your dominant mitt back. Yay! You'll actually miss using your off hand, but the dominant will come back so strong, and so fast. And you'll retain some of that non-dominant hand usefulness for ages. And you will be thankful again, because if you'd broken your off-hand, the story would be very different for it, And instead of that dark timeline, you get to enjoy being mildly ambidextrous for years after this.

I injured my dominant hand many years ago. What I ended up doing was to use my left hand for everything. I was surprised how incredibly fast a human could adapt if they're forced to use only one arm.

I learned to write and draw with my left hand. It's not as good as my right hand, but it was legible. I also got pretty good at handling daily life with my left hand too.

I could even do work with just my left hand. So I thought I was learning a new skill and could be ambidextrous.

But when my right hand was usable again, I quickly lost a lot of my left hand skills because I didn't practice using it. So remember to keep using your left hand periodically!

But I think what I'm saying is, you don't have to limit yourself to just passive things or scrolling through social media. You can do some independent things! But it'll just be slow and tedious at first!

Just go about your life and do your hobbies one handed. It's quite an interesting endeavour. Think of it as the best excuse to learn a new of skill.

Sorry I don't really have more tangible advice. This happened so long ago, I've forgotten a lot it.

I utterly wrecked my right wrist in an industrial accident, and was in a cast for six months, followed by six months of PT to regain (almost) full function.

(At the risk of TMI, the first few times of cleaning one's self with your off hand after going to the restroom felt wrong. :D)

The silver lining is that after all of that, I can now use either hand for fine motor tasks without issue. And it turns out being ambidextrous is really useful! I can switch between left or right mousing, writing, whatever now without any loss of function. Somewhat surprisingly, it only took a few weeks to feel comfortable doing so, too. So this could be a fun thing to work towards. It's been an effective way to avoid RSI from using the mouse a lot, too- wrist feels strained? Switch up for a week, no problem.

I've dislocated my shoulder a number of times.

I found laceless shoes to be a blessing.

You're in the middle of a great employment opportunity! Go to Las Vegas, and get a job at a casino. There's a huge demand for one-armed bandits there.

One thing that might help, though not sure how to implement off the top of my head: some sort of attachment to any round doorknobs. We have handle-shaped handles throughout our house instead of just doorknobs, and they're convenient for opening a door when my arms are full since I can get them with my elbow. At the very least, trying to figure out a way to make that could be a decent distraction for an afternoon or two.

Otherwise, I think everyone else have come up with some good suggestions for things to do. I'll throw in the obligatory lazy suggestions of catching up on some TV shows or books. Maybe find some rabbithole mystery you can help with, like lost media searches. Some really just need people with time to comb through photos or other potential leads. I've spent a couple evenings searching photos of celebrities suspected to be Celebrity Number Six to see if I could find any matches. At the very least, rabbit hole-type mysteries like that can let you find some neat and obscure media you might have never encountered otherwise.