next »

[biomancer]

...

1) DO NOT GET SURGERY. The therapist I went to has healed people that were far more disabled than I was ... without surgery.
2) Do not be afraid of the pain. Most therapists do not understand this and suggest that RSI suffers stop and rest frequently when they feel pain. This seems so right and so intuitive. But it is precisely the wrong advice. (This is how my RSI advanced to RSD.) It is far better to adopt a moderate schedule, and stick to it (working calmly) than to "give up" (as it were) whenever you encounter slight or moderate pain.

Sometimes surgery is necessary - especially when there is connective tissue damage.  Therapy did not bring feeling back to my right hand - the damage was too bad.  Surgery did bring feeling back to my right hand.  Therapy did keep my left hand from getting worse, but therapy does not necessarily cure everything.

And EVERY medical professional I have ever encountered (outside of obstetrics, anyway) agrees that pain is the body's way of saying "stop, don't do this! something is wrong!"  Pain is not something to just be heroically endured - it is a message from the body to be heeded.  It does not necessarily mean you need to drop everything, but it does mean that some corrective action (change of position or technique, at the very least) is needed.

[just_wondering]

I didn't say pain was to be endured. I said it wasn't to be feared. I suggested sticking with a regular, moderate schedule. Nothing heroic.

One of the things I learned is that when it comes to RSI, doctors and surgeons are indeed almost always wrong. There is a huge lack of understanding of chronic pain (not just RSI). You'd be surprised how much supposedly necessary surgery isn't really so. Check out the chapter in Jerome's Groopman's The Anatomy of Hope where the author describes how he recovered from 20 years of truly crippling back pain (after 2 failed surgeries). He supposedly had incurable nerve and tissue damage, but discovered through an exercise program that that was not the case.


[Sorry for the disjointed post. For some reason, my cursor keeps jumping around in a really strange fashion.]

...

1) DO NOT GET SURGERY. The therapist I went to has healed people that were far more disabled than I was ... without surgery.
2) Do not be afraid of the pain. Most therapists do not understand this and suggest that RSI suffers stop and rest frequently when they feel pain. This seems so right and so intuitive. But it is precisely the wrong advice. (This is how my RSI advanced to RSD.) It is far better to adopt a moderate schedule, and stick to it (working calmly) than to "give up" (as it were) whenever you encounter slight or moderate pain.

Sometimes surgery is necessary - especially when there is connective tissue damage.  Therapy did not bring feeling back to my right hand - the damage was too bad.  Surgery did bring feeling back to my right hand.  Therapy did keep my left hand from getting worse, but therapy does not necessarily cure everything.

And EVERY medical professional I have ever encountered (outside of obstetrics, anyway) agrees that pain is the body's way of saying "stop, don't do this! something is wrong!"  Pain is not something to just be heroically endured - it is a message from the body to be heeded.  It does not necessarily mean you need to drop everything, but it does mean that some corrective action (change of position or technique, at the very least) is needed.

[peppergal]

Not carpal tunnel, but I find that after grading papers, I have intense pain in my neck, in my right shoulder, and all down the right side of my back (I am right-handed).  I must be unconsciously tensing myself up while I'm grading.  Today it's so bad I couldn't drive, because I couldn't turn my head or move my arm far enough to shift gears (and I drive a stick shift).

I got a massage, which has helped somewhat (I have about 2/3 my normal range of motion now), but I'm still achy.

It's not the act of writing itself -- I write everything out longhand first and then edit while typing it up, because I have a lot of trouble composing at the computer.  This only happens to me after grading.

Has anyone else every had something similar?

[voxprincipalis]

Not carpal tunnel, but I find that after grading papers, I have intense pain in my neck, in my right shoulder, and all down the right side of my back (I am right-handed).  I must be unconsciously tensing myself up while I'm grading.  Today it's so bad I couldn't drive, because I couldn't turn my head or move my arm far enough to shift gears (and I drive a stick shift).

Without knowing exactly which muscles are involved, it's hard to know what's going on, and I don't know how you sit while grading or what your posture is like. But sometimes pain like this can be caused by habitually overstretching the muscles of the upper back, which simultaneously weakens the corresponding muscles in the upper chest and makes them contract. Stretches that reverse this habitual placement by opening the chest and allowing the upper back muscles to contract can help.

The site below has some good stretches, particularly the one for the levator scapulae, though the woman in the picture isn't quite following the directions -- the more you can align your elbow and upper arm towards the vertical, the deeper the stretch you will get:
http://www.hesfit.com/men/comment/shoulder-dysfunction-neck-pain-and-the-scapula/

You can get an even deeper stretch if, after you are fully in position, you allow the shoulder of the arm that's down your back to fall away from your ear. (I'm sure that sentence makes no sense to someone who's not doing the stretch!)

This is also a good stretch, though it can be intense, so go carefully:
http://www.healthline.com/blogs/exercise_fitness/2006/10/fixing-upper-back-and-neck-pain.html

Even the simple stretch of interlacing your fingers behind your back and straightening your arms can help open the chest.

VP

[tee_bee]

MG: I am blessed not to have any of these problems, but my wife has carpal tunnel pretty bad (working canneries in Alaska) and she gets through it. I wish she'd get a brace, though.

One thing not mentioned in this thread--dictation software for your computer. I mention it because a colleague with Rhematoid Arthritis uses is becase some days she can hardly type at all. I have been using Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 lately as a productivity booster, but as a way of avoiding the keyboard it would probably be great. It might be worth a look--even if it's only 95 percent accurate, it might still hurt less than typing. Indeed,  your ergonomists might well suggest it.

Good luck and keep us posted on how it works out.