I first showed serious symptoms of RSI in May 2003 when I was finishing my honors thesis, just before graduation. My wrists and forearms ached and burned pretty much constantly for a few weeks. After a doctor visit and some conversation with the Disability Office at Rice, I decided to just stick it out, take Vioxx, and wear wrist braces, and rest afterwards.<\/p>\n
It diminished through the summer, but came back with a vengeance in November, after my first month of graduate coursework in Scotland. For the next two and a half years, I suffered from chronic severe RSI that nearly prevented me finishing my coursework on time, and did prevent me from finishing my MSc on time. At my most severe, I was almost disabled. I could barely cook, I couldn’t carry anything for longer than a few seconds or lift anything heavy. Squeezing a shampoo bottle, opening a door, and folding clothes became the challenges of my days. I spent a lot of time watching TV, since I couldn’t hold up a book to read. Thank goodness for Wimbledon and the BBC.<\/p>\n
I “rested” as much as I could given that daily life was a struggle. I sought physical therapy, therapeutic massage, acupuncture, osteopathy, network chiropractic, Alexander Technique, and Feldenkrais, as well as more unusual treatment options like somatic psychotherapy. I saw a hand surgeon (but ignored her opinion). I took hot baths, worked out, and did stretches. I bought voice dictation software (aka speech recognition) and a different keyboard for those short periods when I could type. I did get somewhat better; I was able to type a bit and more or less function in daily life. I finished my thesis in July 2005, almost a year after it was originally due, and only with the help of two very wonderful people who served as my scribes.<\/p>\n
These days, I can do anything I want. I’m back to spending many hours at the keyboard, as well as all the other activities I had given up, and I never have to worry about severe pain. How?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I first showed serious symptoms of RSI in May 2003 when I was finishing my honors thesis, just before graduation. My wrists and forearms ached and burned pretty much constantly for a few weeks. After a doctor visit and some conversation with the Disability Office at Rice, I decided to just stick it out, take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/310\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lyspeth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}