Let me explain
Today I fought sharks for the sailor style quest on my warlord file. During the fight, I loosed my left hand. After that, I saw that with the basic combat, my character was never using is left hand to punch (with m1’s). Also, your character in AO holds the staff in his left hand, well when I was selecting the staff, it disappeared and I wasn’t able to use it. I was still having it in my inventory, but I wasn’t able to use it.
Also this is how your character looks when you don’t have a left hand:
(It’s not a max level file so the weapons are not very good)