Plaidophile

The internet needs a "don't reply, I'm just bitching" font.

Okay, I break your rule, but:

Have you considered surgery?

You know, I don't expect a lot from my readers. I write, you read, we comment, and a great time is had by all.

So when I say that suggestions for even "obscure" things regarding CTS are something I've already heard of and which don't work and which I don't want to hear about, doesn't that rather imply that the most well-known things would fall under the same category?

For the record, CTS surgery does nothing to help the condition. It only treats the symptoms, with the totally bogus assumption that after surgery, the activity which caused the inflammation will cease, which it almost certainly would not, which means that when the CTS comes back, it comes back much more severely, and can't even be treated again as a result.

The only effective treatment around is massage, but it can only do so much. I have a friend who is a former massage therapist who occasionally works on my wrists, and in the meantime I do little touch-ups on myself, but that still doesn't help when I've been doing very wrist-intensive, timing-weird stuff (like, say, video editing) for a few days straight and can't even take predictable breaks, much less stop to work on my tendons and such.

The people who ask me if I've considered surgery/acupuncture/voice-dictation software/taking a break from the computer/etc. are almost universally people who have never dealt with these issues (it's easy to be an armchair analyst when you're not the one with the numb fingers and constant, shooting pain up your forearms), and have no idea what I actually do with a computer, or at least have no idea what the things I do actually entail. (Note: voice dictation does not and can not work for programming or video editing. There is no way it will ever work for either. Voice dictation is great for secretaries. I am not a secretary.)

Heh. I know what you mean. I have psoriasis, and it is rare for a more than a few days to go by before someone says something like "Have you ever tried "Insert random hand lotion"?

It's crazy. I try not to be sarcastic and appreciate the fact that they're trying to be helpful, but often I reply "Gee... Lotion? I never even thought to try that! or "Wow, Vaseline Intensive Care Moisturizing Lotion really solves what neither Western or Eastern medicine can!"

A direct neural interface to the brain.

That'd tickle I bet.

It'd suck when I had to get up in a hurry to grab a misbehaving cat.

Nah - go wireless.