Who holds your hand?

MEET KIM

There are only 365 days in a year. If you’re lucky enough to live to a ripe old age then you’re going to repeat every one of those days probably 80, 85, or even 90 times over. There’s a strong chance that you’re going to end up with multiple memories, maybe both good and bad, associated with each day. Some days will stand out in your mind more than others.

For me December 23^rd is one of those stand out days when it comes around each year. It’s associated with one of the most wonderful memories of my life. Back in 2007 Kim and I were away on vacation. That particular day we stood on the top of a snow-covered mountain in a little resort called Homewood, with a stunning view of Lake Tahoe (California). The sun was shining, and the sky was clear blue. And Kim, the man that I loved to the moon and back, asked me to marry him.

December 23^rd was already a special day for him as it would have been his gran’s birthday. He’d hatched a plan to propose that day. I’d been hoping and hoping for months that he’d ask me – even though we’d both sworn we wouldn’t get married again after divorcing our first partners. But hey ho, never say never, and I was dying for the chance to proclaim to the world (well at least a small group of our friends and family) just how much I loved this guy.

I have a photo of that day, with our beaming smiles, hanging on the wall of my office. Reflected in my sunglasses is a tiny version of Dad - standing there on his skis taking a picture of us minutes after Kim popped the question. It’s an extra special picture now that Dad is no longer with us.

I was never a big hand holder until I met Kim. We hold hands when we walk the dog. We hold hands when we’re sat on the sofa. We lie in bed and hold hands. And sometimes we even sleep holding hands.

Holding hands is special and the effect it has on you isn’t just psychological, it’s physical too. Research has shown it not only soothes and calms your body, but it reduces blood pressure and perceived pain, while also softening stressful experiences. It has the greatest effect when you’re holding your hands with someone you love, but it seems to also work if you hold a stranger’s hand.

“If you really understand hand-holding - what it is and how it has its effects - you begin to understand just about every single facet of what it is to be a human being… It expresses all the things that we are for each other.” James Coan, Clinical Psychologist and Director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia.

Think of how small the palm of your hand is compared to the surface area of your skin as a whole. But your palms have a disproportionately high percentage (15%) of the sensory nerves related to touch in the human body. As a result, your hands can tell the difference between touching another person’s hand, stroking a pet’s fur, or putting your hand in a bowl of ice cubes. And there’s more. Other studies have shown that you can even identify another person’s emotions, such as gratitude, disgust, happiness or fear, just by looking at their hands without even seeing the other persons face.

Our hands are so integral when it comes to our experience of the world. Yet we take them for granted. We never consider them not functioning, especially in their entirety. We’ve all experienced a cut on a finger, a bump on the hand, or perhaps even a broken bone in the hand or wrist. But for most of us that’s the worst we’ll endure when it comes to damage to our hands. It’s another thing all together when your hands don’t work at all – even for a relatively short time.

Just stop for a moment and think about that. How would you react if you had no feeling in your hands and they failed to obey your brain?

But I digress. Let me take you back to December 23^rd – that day also holds another, not so pleasant, memory that I’ll never forget.

On December 23^rd 2022 I woke up with nausea and then a pain in my side. Little did I know that just 24 hours later my blood pressure would be plummeting as sepsis progressed to septic shock. I would have died within a matter of hours without drastic medical intervention to battle the flesh-eating bacteria that had invaded my body - including multiple surgeries on my left leg and abdomen and gallons of antibiotics that were poured into my veins.

“Can you hold my hand?” I can still hear Kim’s words echoing in my head. His voice becoming more and more desperate as he spoke to me that evening in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). I was less than half awake and had no idea that I’d been in a drug-induced coma for almost a week.

I don’t even remember if I could feel the touch of his hand on mine. In my head I think I could but perhaps that’s a figment of my imagination. I hope that I could feel the comfort of his hand on mine at a time when I needed it the most. I know how soothing and reassuring it would have been for me – consciously or not.

I couldn’t hold Kim’s hand that day. Nor the next as I gradually awoke after I was moved out of the ICU. My hands didn’t work. They just flopped around on the end of my arms. I had absolutely no control over my hands or fingers. It makes my hands ache right now even thinking about it.

For Kim being able to hold my hand was so important to him (and for me). A way to demonstrate that we’d never let go of each other again. A way for him to convince himself that I didn’t want to leave him. A way for him to gain a little confidence that I would get better.

My hands became a way for Kim to track my recovery. A barometer that showed the level of my returning strength and spirit. Each day he would come into my hospital room and ask me to hold his hand. Each time I would put my hand in his and try to squeeze. Looking back, he was so kind and every time he told me how great I was doing even if he felt only the gentlest of pressure from my hand. I was convinced that I was squeezing hard enough to crack nuts!

He would bring me little challenges. I’d missed all of Christmas and the prerequisite gift giving at home. One morning he and Mum brought in a big bag of Christmas gifts so that I could open them. But it was such hard work. A toddler would have done so much better than me in getting through the tape and paper. Sometimes it all defeated me, and I had to let Mum or Kim take the gift and open it for me.

As the days passed in hospital I got a little more sensation and movement back in my hands each day. I hated being dependent on others to drink or eat anything. But my fingers had a will of their own. I’d try and pick up a cup of water and my fingers would suddenly twitch and spasm pushing the cup away from me and sometimes sending it spinning off the table and onto the floor. I’d keep trying for what seemed like hours.

Finally, with a lot of concentration, I was able to pick up a cup again and take a drink. It felt like the biggest achievement. I was able to hold a spoon to feed myself a yogurt or drink a protein shake.

Then I could pick up my phone. Sliding my finger around the screen several times before I could get my fingerprint in the right spot to open it. It was such a relief to feel at least a little connected to the world outside again. I managed to pick up a call without any help. And open WhatsApp to see what messages Kim had sent me.

I’m still not exactly sure of why I had problems with my hands. Perhaps it was a result of the infection, my poor circulation because of my incredibly low BP, some kind of other effect from the sepsis, or something else. After hours of digging and a lot of dead ends it seems it might have been something called critical illness polyneuropathy (CIP) – impairment of the nerves. A common occurrence in patients admitted to ICU with sepsis and septic shock.

Yet no doctor ever mentioned it and I’ve been through my medical journal and can’t find any reference to me even having this issue. Weirdly the doctors and nurses that cared for me never seemed to spot that I had an issue with my hands. Perhaps it was indeed CIP, but it will remain one of the unknowns.

People think that my hands are fine now and I let them think that. Everyone I’ve told has had such a hard time even attempting to wrap their heads around the fact that my hands didn’t work.

Mostly my hands are better. Though in some weird way they still feel a little alien. As if they’re not my hands at all. But they work and in the months after I got sick my fine motor skills, that help you do the little fiddly things like threading a needle or pressing a small button, gradually returned.

But they are different. They get tired more easily. And when I’m exhausted, they have this strange tingle – like a very soft pins and needles feeling. I have less grip strength than I had before - yes, I know I need to buy one of those little hand exerciser devices!

While typing the thousands upon thousands of words for my book I’ve recognised that my fingers sometimes still have a bit of a will of their own. Little twitches happen that I wouldn’t have spotted otherwise. A finger will be heading for the right letter on my keyboard and then suddenly twitch – left, right, up, or even down (there’s no pattern) and hit a different letter entirely. Spell checker gets a bit more of a workout than it did in the past.

But it really doesn’t matter in the bigger scheme of things. I can hold Kim’s hand again and plan to do that for a very long time.