February 29, 2008, 3:46 PM — First up: disclaimer. This is about health hazards of using a computer keyboard all day. I am a computer geek. Not a medical practitioner. If you have symptoms that you believe are related to your use of computers, go see a doctor.
Twenty five years bashing a computer keyboard has finally caught up with me I'm afraid. Movable aches and pains running up and down arms, in and out of my wrists, through my fingers, shooting pains in my shoulder and arm muscles...the works!
There are two common acronyms related to this state of affairs. RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) and CTS (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). Both are problematic pieces of terminology for reasons we will get to soon.
If, for want of a better label, you think of yourself as having RSI or CTS, you might find my story interesting for comparative purposes. If you don't have symptoms, please don't conclude this piece will be of no relevance to you. RSI/CTS can be cumulative. You do not have to overtly injure yourself to bring it on. It has most likely incubated in me for decades, silently getting stronger and stronger and then popping out dramatically. I did not have RSI/CTS for twenty five years. And now, all of a sudden, boom, I do! Next week, it could be you.
Next up: the terminology problem. The term RSI covers a wide variety of symptoms and causes. So much so that it is next to useless in pinning down a particular cause or particular effect. Also next to useless is the other regularly encountered acronym CTS - Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The carpal tunnel is in your wrist. Pains in your wrists could be because of a compressed nerve in your wrist. This is true of CTS as I understand it. However, there appear to be lots of ways in which pain in the wrist can be the effect but not the ultimate cause. Unfortunately, conflating the effect with the cause appears commonplace out there.
Next up: my story so far. It all began in November 2007...
Phase 1: Aches, pains and denial. I have been doing this computer keyboarding thing for twenty five years darn it! This RSI thing cannot happen now. Surely my system is used to whatever stresses and strains keyboarding causes? Besides, how can gently tapping keys cause injury? Now if I was a professional lumberjack or baseball pitcher, perhaps but keyboarding?
Phase 2: Doctor visit. "You have a repetitive strain my friend. Just rest it up and you will be fine."
Phase 3: I Rest up. In my case 12 clear days without so much as touching a
keyboard over the Christmas break period. 12 days!
Phase 4: Uh oh. My first day back and the aches and pains arrive back to exactly as they were 12 days before. The pains are annoying on many levels. Physically, the best analogy I can conjure is that it is like distributed Chinese water torture. No individual ache or pain is severe but they come regularly - but randomly - to different parts of my upper body. I never know where the next "ping" is coming to. Sometimes they wake me up at night.
Phase 5: I am a computer engineer darn it! I know how to debug things. I will debug this myself if medical science fails me! I order a slew of books on Amazon, subscribe to mailing lists[2]. I Google a lot. A picture slowly emerged.
Phase 6: Maybe sports massage therapy can help if my problem is (at least in part) tendonitis? I take some sessions. I feel better but have a mental ache that this is not getting to the root of the problem. I have a second mental ache concerning the placebo effect. The more I read the more interactions between mind and body I come across. Dr. Sarno's book in particular, holds out the bold assertion that there may be nothing wrong with me physically at all! Yikes.
Dr. Sarno talks about tension, stress. Yes. They ring bells for sure. I have some of those. So the stress (in part) causes the pain, which in turn stresses me out which in turn...Uh oh. I don't like where this hermeneutic circle is heading.
I try to talk myself out of it. I tell myself I'm fine. The pain, however begs to differ.
