My name is Adam Cason and I am from Cleveland Tn. I am 29yrs old and am a partially disabled gamer. Back in June 8 of 05 I was working in a publishing house and was changing the blades on a book trimmer. You have to literally lay down inside this trimmer to change the beyond razor sharp blades.  I barely grazed myself on one of the blades as I was pulling myself out of the machine and suffered a 2cm cut on my wrist. Strangely there was no blood at all but yet you could see waaaay down into my arm to the blood vessels and all.

I grabbed the nearest shop rag and was rushed to the hospital. They examined me in the emergency room after I had sat there for 4hrs and they could tell that something inside my wrist had indeed been knicked but had not severed. The doctor thought it was just a blood vessel and sewed my arm up. A few days after I had a pretty big lump on my arm and tought it was just swelling. I couldnt move my thumb on my injured arm at all and was freaking out. The emergency room doc told me to wait it out and if I was still having problems when my stitched had to be removed that something would be done about it. Ten days later my thumb was still unable to move and the lump on my arm was still there.

When I went to get my stitches out they referred me to an orthoopedic specialist who knew that something was wrong the moment he saw my arm. Unfortunately he was very booked and couldnt operate on me for a couple weeks but finally on June 30 he was able to perform surgery. He found that 3 tendons had severed that the lump on my arm was tendons retracted and rolled up into a ball under the skin. He repaired the tendons and put me in a hard fibreglass cast for a month then a splint for a month. When he finally took the splint off the knot was back, they had ruptured and it was back to square one.

I was then sent to Chattanooga to one of the best hand surgeons in the South east United States. My new doctor went in and by the time he got to the tendons they had shrunk to the point where he had to reroute a tendon from my index finger to my thumb so it could extend my EPL tendon. Since that surgery I have had 5 more operations which have included cutting an extra tendon from my wrist to graft a new APL tendon and total reconstruction of the tendon canals in my wrist due to scar tissue totally taking over and ruining my old ones.

I have also had my thumb fused at the base so it no longer bends at the hinge that most people have at the base of their thumb. Hopefully this ordeal will be over and done around September and I will finally get back to a somewhat normal life. I have lost most (over 90%) of the use of my thumb and my wrist has about 25% of its normal movement.

Gaming has been my therapy this whole time and I have had to learn to play games with surgical splints and casts on my hand. I have also had to learn how to use my index finger to control the left analog stick and use my ring finger and pinky for trigger and shoulder buttons. It has taken some getting used to but I am able to play pretty much any game now without my thumb, even Guitar Hero.

Physical therapy was grueling but conditioning my hand with playing games helped and still helps to this day. Back when I was a kid my parents would tell me that gaming was a toy but now I can tell them and others that it is also a physical rehabilitation source. So thank goodness for gaming because without it there is no telling where I would be!!! I know there are others who have it much worse than me and still game as well. Thank you for being an inspiration!!  Stay strong people and keep on gaming!!

Fianlly here are some pictures of my scars, chicks dig scars......