This is a rather boring story.
So I have carpal tunnel.
Actually, I've had it for a bloody long while. But since I stopped fencing, and stopped playing the piano, and stopped participating in rugby (which has very little to do with carpal tunnel but a lot to do with other aches/pains/bruises), and stopped drawing, the issue more or less went a way for quite a while. In short, I basically stopped everything that abused the carpus joint in my left hand, and the numbness went away (although I still randomly dropped things like crazy, and my hands still shook sometimes).
It's always been worse in my left hand than my right, for whatever odd reason. I'm pseudo ambidextrous, but I never fenced or drew with my left (though I do primarily type and drive left-handed). And since I wrote right handed, which is the only activity I can't stop, and my right hand was fine, the intermittent clumsiness and numbness and pain wasn't enough of an issue to worry about.
But over the past year my desk arrangement has sucked. I am short, and the chair is not high enough to put me at the right height for my desk as it is. And then my main computer tried to implode, so I added an external cooling fan that raises its elevation by 1.5 inches. So for the past six months, I've been spending seven hours a day typing at a Very Bad Position for my wrists. And my left arm let me know it with a huge increase of shaking fingers and complete numbness and pain. Luckily, I'm a ridiculously stoic bitch about pain/discomfort/sickness and I didn't let it slow me down.*
And then yesterday came, when I was sitting here working on grad aps and all of a sudden I couldn't feel my phalanges in my right hand, and all I can say to that is, well,
"Aw, bugger."
Sigh.
In other news:
- I have been REALLY PRODUCTIVE. I have also been forcing myself to Not Visit Livejournal, which has just had the effect of multiple LJ messages piling up in my inbox and thus increasing the amount of work I have to do. Oops.
- It looks like smokexscibbles wrote me a rather tantalizing White Collar fanfic over here, and I encourage everyone to go and read it right now, because I don't yet have the time ><
- Also, my Honors is due on Monday. I have to go write 4,000 words a day, now. Like, right now. Yes, I did just interrupt my productivity to complain about something that was keeping me from being productive (and yet, I was still doing the thing that was causing the issue.).
*I am breaking my Wall of Silence to say: holy shit do my hands hurt sometimes.
Actually, I've had it for a bloody long while. But since I stopped fencing, and stopped playing the piano, and stopped participating in rugby (which has very little to do with carpal tunnel but a lot to do with other aches/pains/bruises), and stopped drawing, the issue more or less went a way for quite a while. In short, I basically stopped everything that abused the carpus joint in my left hand, and the numbness went away (although I still randomly dropped things like crazy, and my hands still shook sometimes).
It's always been worse in my left hand than my right, for whatever odd reason. I'm pseudo ambidextrous, but I never fenced or drew with my left (though I do primarily type and drive left-handed). And since I wrote right handed, which is the only activity I can't stop, and my right hand was fine, the intermittent clumsiness and numbness and pain wasn't enough of an issue to worry about.
But over the past year my desk arrangement has sucked. I am short, and the chair is not high enough to put me at the right height for my desk as it is. And then my main computer tried to implode, so I added an external cooling fan that raises its elevation by 1.5 inches. So for the past six months, I've been spending seven hours a day typing at a Very Bad Position for my wrists. And my left arm let me know it with a huge increase of shaking fingers and complete numbness and pain. Luckily, I'm a ridiculously stoic bitch about pain/discomfort/sickness and I didn't let it slow me down.*
And then yesterday came, when I was sitting here working on grad aps and all of a sudden I couldn't feel my phalanges in my right hand, and all I can say to that is, well,
"Aw, bugger."
Sigh.
In other news:
- I have been REALLY PRODUCTIVE. I have also been forcing myself to Not Visit Livejournal, which has just had the effect of multiple LJ messages piling up in my inbox and thus increasing the amount of work I have to do. Oops.
- It looks like smokexscibbles wrote me a rather tantalizing White Collar fanfic over here, and I encourage everyone to go and read it right now, because I don't yet have the time ><
- Also, my Honors is due on Monday. I have to go write 4,000 words a day, now. Like, right now. Yes, I did just interrupt my productivity to complain about something that was keeping me from being productive (and yet, I was still doing the thing that was causing the issue.).
*I am breaking my Wall of Silence to say: holy shit do my hands hurt sometimes.