I Had a Stroke at 51. Then I Learned to Code with One Hand.

In 2022, I had an ischemic stroke. I was 51. It hit the right side of my brain and took the left side of my body with it — my arm, my leg, my ability to walk. It took my speech too. I went from a full life to a hospital bed in a matter of hours.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The first year was brutal. Learning to exist in a body that doesn't work the way it used to is a full-time job. Rehab, frustration, grief. You mourn the person you were. You don't know who you're becoming yet.

Finding something to build

Before the stroke, I had a career. After, I had a power wheelchair and a lot of time. I couldn't go back to what I was doing before. I needed something new — something I could do from home, with one hand, at my own pace.

I found Claude.

Not Claude Code specifically — not at first. I started by just talking to Claude, the AI assistant. I'd ask it questions about technology, about business ideas, about how things worked. And at some point I started asking it to help me write code.

One hand, one keyboard

I type with my left hand. Just my left hand. It's slower than it used to be — everything is slower than it used to be — but it works. I can't speak clearly enough for voice-to-text to be reliable, so typing is what I've got.

Claude Code changed the equation. Instead of typing every line myself, I describe what I want and Claude writes it. I review it, adjust it, learn from it. It's not that the AI is doing the work for me — it's that it's doing the typing for me. The thinking is still mine.

I'm building real things now. A website. An AI agent consulting practice. A platform for device trade-ins. None of this would have been possible if I had to type every semicolon myself.

What nobody tells you about disability and tech

The tech industry talks a lot about accessibility. alt tags, ARIA labels, screen readers. That stuff matters. But there's another kind of accessibility that doesn't get discussed: can someone with one working hand actually build software?

The answer, increasingly, is yes. AI tools are the most significant accessibility breakthrough I've experienced since the power wheelchair. They don't just help disabled people use technology — they help disabled people create technology.

The hard parts

I'm not going to pretend this is a feel-good montage. I'm 55 now and I'm uninsured. I need a statin I can't easily get. I need vestibular rehab for balance issues the stroke left behind. I manage chronic pain. Some days the fatigue wins and I don't get much done.

But I'm building. I'm learning. I'm shipping things into the world. Three years ago I couldn't hold a fork. Now I'm writing code and running a business.

Why I'm writing this

Because someone out there just had a stroke, or a spinal cord injury, or a diagnosis that changed everything. And they're lying in a bed wondering if they'll ever be useful again. I know that feeling. I lived in it for months.

You will build again. The tools are better than they've ever been. The path looks different than you expected, but it's there. You just have to start typing — even if it's with one hand.