Pants Buttons

After the wreck, I had to figure out how to get dressed on my own.  This and the next two posts will be about dealing with that.

So after my hospital stay, I ended up in a Rehab facility.  While there I had Occupational Therapy.   While the OT therapists were good, they didn’t have much experience with an Arm Amputee. And why should they?  80% Of upper extremity amputations are just fingers and even then upper extremities only account for 5.4% of all amputations.  (These numbers come from the Amputee Coalition numbers for New York which is where I live and the wreck happened.. At the time of this writing, I’m not in anyway affiliated with the Amputee Coalition) Due to their lack of experience, they weren’t able to effectively teach me techniques for day to day living without my arm. So I had to use my strongest muscle, the one between my ears.

Let’s get started..

When I was in rehab, OT  got me these button tools.  They’re a wire loop on a handle that allow you to guide the button in the hole. They work, but they are accessibility tools, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, I try to avoid accessibility tools when I can. If you forget to bring it on vacation, you’re screwed.  Also it’s one more thing you have to bring and when you travel by motorcycle, like me, the less crap you bring the better!

I also found that they get hung up on the button making them difficult to work with and more importantly, I found I don’t need them.

Let me show you how I button up.  I use two different techniques, one for my pants and one for my shirts.  Since I put my pants on first, I’ll start there.  I’ll document the technique for shirts in a second post.

In the pictures, I’m wearing loose fitting jeans to make taking pictures easier.  I also suggest you learn this technique with loose fitting clothes as it’ll be easier to learn.  Once you get the hang of it you can go back to wearing your skinny jeans. (I hate to see her leave, but I love to watch her go…)

I start by putting my middle finger through the button hole.

Then pull the hole side of the pants to the button side, with my middle finger and grab the button side with my thumb and index finger.

Now using your middle finger, find the bottom of the button.

Next you’ll use your middle finger as a guide by tipping the bottom of the button up with your middle finger that’s still in the button hole.

Then using your Ring Finger and your Index finger, push the button hole side of the pants down over the button.

At this point the button is at a 45 degree angle and almost all the way through the hole, to hammer it home, just press down on the bottom of the button with your middle finger and upward angle on the thumb, while still holding the hole side with your index and ring fingers.  This rotates the button from 45 degrees to 90 degrees perpendicular to the floor and pushes it the rest of the way through the hole.

Here’s the video of it in action: