Plaidophile

When I was en route to Chicago, the battery in my MacBook Pro began to swell, so bad that my touchpad stopped working and when I opened the battery cover, the battery popped out with a great deal of velocity. So I made an appointment at the nearest Genius Bar (which is annoying to have to do), and when my appointment came up (after a few failed checkins) I showed my quite-round battery to the Genius(tm) who immediately just gave me a new one for free, despite my MacBook being about a year out of warranty. It never hurts to ask nicely (although I was prepared to argue for it anyway).

Also, having previously been dissatisfied with a compact Logitech keyboard and a Wacom Bamboo Touch, I bought the Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad, and while it's weird to spend $140+tax on a mouse and keyboard, these are actually quite comfortable, and I have them on a little Ikea lap desk and it's much more comfortable on my wrists than trying to put up with my horrible keyboard tray. Hopefully this will help a lot. Unfortunately, the lap desk is a bit thicker and squishier than I'd like, so I'll have to try a couple others out, but still, not a bad setup, and altogether costs way less than a proper keyboard tray (and a desk that can hold a proper keyboard tray).

Things I meant to do after my checkup but got distracted:

1. Make an appointment with the referred neurologist to get another nerve conductivity test
2. Make an appointment with the referred orthopedic surgeon to get treatment options, including (hopefully) reputable massage therapists

Not wrist-related but other action items resulting from the checkup,

1. Get the labwork done (fortunately that's a walk-in and I can do it before work on Monday)
2. Make an appointment with the referred dermatologist for the skin cancer screening (my idea since I've been a bit concerned about a couple of moles lately)
3. Also wasn't Walgreen's supposed to call me about my Albuterol prescription when it was ready? It's been well over an hour. I guess I can head over there now (grumble).

So back when I was 18 or 19 I started to develop wrist pain, and that led to full-blown carpal tunnel syndrome (pain radiating up both arms from my wrists, tingly fingertips, reduced grip strength, twitchy fingers, and so on). I got it more or less under control with a DataHand keyboard, but then with my first job out of college it came back full force and I quit and went back to grad school.

While in grad school I got the CTS under control thanks to massage therapy and a significant reduction in typing volume, but I was left with permanent tendon damage (which I later learned was most likely tendinosis). This tendinosis would continue to flare up now and then (every other year or so), but the carpal tunnel syndrome remained at bay.

Today my fingertips got numb again, and I'm showing all the signs of a resurgence of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Of course this would happen two weeks before an important musical event that I've been looking forward to for months.

Hopefully I can get it under control pretty quickly but my suspicion is that I will not be playing any non-drum instruments at SFRR (fortunately I already have a backup band partially lined up, so I guess the rhythm guitarist will simply be the guitarist), my posting frequency will diminish even more significantly, and I won't be able to do comics or music or the like (not that I've been posting music on my sites lately but I've been doing a few side projects). And of course I can't help but worry about, you know, my career. Basically, this really sucks.

Fortunately I have a two-week vacation coming up (starting with Song Fight Live) so maybe I can keep myself away from the Internet enough during that time to give myself time to heal again.

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Usually my left wrist is more painful than my right (which is the case currently), but lately it's my right wrist which sucks more. It's like my fingers don't want to move correctly sometimes, and sometimes my right thumb twitches involuntarily, like there's a nerve problem or something. I've been drawing a lot more than usual lately so that probably has something to do with it.

My grip strength is still excellent, though, and I don't have numbness in my fingertips, so it's not carpal tunnel syndrome (I did probably have CTS 10 years ago but since then most of my wrist problems have been more likely some form of tendinosis).

Man, why does biology have to suck?

For now I'll try mousing with my left hand, and maybe try to figure out a more ergonomic setup for my Wacom tablet at home (I'm not going to try drawing left-handed though).

So, after an Ars Technica thread about dealing with RSI, I decided to order a Powerball, which arrived a few days ago. I played with it a few times but couldn't figure out how to get it going, until I searched Youtube and came across this useful video.

I got the Techno model which only shows your score after a certain threshold (which I haven't reached yet) but even without that, this thing is great. Just a couple minutes of it feels like I've been working out for hours, and I can barely move my arm afterwards from the muscle fatigue. It finally gives me something useful to do during my typing breaks (and it's certainly more fun than lifting dumbbells while watching TV).

Of course one has to be careful when using one in an office environment.

Hopefully this will finally help me get over my long-term wrist problems. I'm sure I'll keep everyone updated.

For the last month or so my wrists have been getting really bad again, and for some reason I've been in denial. Argh. I guess this is the same cycle I go through every few years. This time around I think it's a combination of bad ergonomics (my keyboard tray at work kind of sucks and I have no keyboard tray at home) and other stress factors.

In particular, over the last couple weeks I've been playing guitar and drawing a lot, which probably has a lot to do with it. Also I haven't been sleeping with my wrist braces for the last, oh, 6 months. So that's something I'm going to have to start doing again. Meh.

I'm having a heck of a time trying to find a decent massage therapist in downtown San Francisco. Most of what I can find are erotic masseuses who advertise their picture more than their credentials, and what's left is mostly practitioners of bullcrap like reiki and reflexology.

I really need someone (preferably a CMT, though the reiki/reflexology practitioners all claim to be CMTs as well so I'm guessing CMT doesn't really mean much anymore) who will do deep-tendon massage for tendinosis. Surely there's got to be someone good and reputable around here?

(I can find a number of decent-looking therapists down in Mountain View, San Jose, etc. and I suppose it's not that big a deal to go down on a Saturday or whatever, but it'd be much more convenient if I could go during the work week without taking a day off from work.)

That's the important one.

There hasn't been a "Dear fluffy" in quite some time, but Chris just writes in with this:

Hello

Googling for leads on what's been plaguing me for the past six months brought me to your site, specifically this post:

http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/e/2006/06/16-tendinosis.php

I've been diagnosed with everything from tendinitis to deQuervain's to nerve damage in my neck with no luck so I still hunt for answers. Since your wrist posts seem to end after that one I'm very curious: did anything in that post work for you? Have you had any improvements or progress? Living with this, I sincerely hope you have

Regards
Chris

I've been going about treating my wrist problems all wrong. I mean, I was doing an established protocol for treating inflammation of the tendons, but cortisone didn't help at all. Reading further I found out it's much more likely I have tendinosis, which is caused by several microtears in the collagen layer of the tendons. In the case of tendinosis, the last thing you want to do is get rid of the inflammation, because that is how the body sends important stuff to the tendons to repair the collagen.

There is an experimental treatment for tendonosis called "prolotherapy" which actually induces inflammation to speed the natural healing process up, but apparently the best treatment is to exercise the muscles in "braking" motions, not stretch, not use anti-inflammatories (instead using painkillers like acetaminophen) to mitigate the pain, and not do the things which cause damage for a month or more. Argh.

So, nerve conductivity tests showed that there's no compression or damage. So whatever I have isn't typical carpal tunnel syndrome. Yay me.

You know it isn't a good sign when a traditional doctor suggests trying acupuncture...

(Well okay, he didn't actually say it outright but he implied it.)

I really don't like the current chunk of songs which I'm so horribly late on due to my wrists anyway, at least not Been To China or A Thousand Swords. There's a couple of surprise ones I still want to do, though, and I guess I got a bit less shitty for Birds Of Our Own. Really there's not a lot of worthwhile songs left though.

I actually missed the +5 deadline for "Been To China." I have lots of ideas for it but can't work on it because it hurts too much. Meh.

Hopefully this Friday I'll get cortisone and then I'll be all better.

Because my wrists are teh sukc right now my superiors want me to just do non-typing analysis and demi-management stuff until I can get to the orthopedist, and the one who I was recommended to see doesn't have anything available until next Friday. So, no typing until then. Although I appreciate work not wanting me to kill my wrists, after just one day I've already taken care of all the management-type stuff I can foresee for the next week or so. And so now I'm being paid to basically sit around and not even twiddle my thumbs. And I've also been politely asked to not work on music in my spare time (so of course my sadistic muse has decided to fill my head with song ideas! and I'm just bursting at the seams with songs right now) and to keep my non-work typing to a minimum.

I really appreciate the concern for my physical well-being but I AM GOING CRAZY. And it's only been one day! (Two if you count being sent home on Friday.)

There's got to be something productive I can do without using my hands.

last night i had the worst flareup of cts pain ever. hasn't really gone away. finally dragged myself into work today and told my manager of the problem and he told me to take the day off and we'll figure out what to do. gonna do as little as possible witih my hands this weekend also. later

wrists hurt

For the entire weekend, I will not be on MUCKs, IRC, or AIM. I will try to not post lots of weblog entries. The only computer use will be reading email, browsing the web, and maybe drawing my comic.

Future livelihood is more important than short-term entertainment.