When I get up in the morning, I write. When I get to work, I spend all day in a cubicle on a computer. When I head home, I write. When I get home, I am often on a computer. I live the classic American sedentary lifestyle. I type 99 words per minutes according to quick brown foxes that jump over lazy dogs. Or at least I did until this past week.
Carpal tunnel syndrome is probably something most writers will deal with at some point or another and at varying degrees. For me it meant that holding the Chinese take-out bag sucked because pinching hurts. Or it meant doing hand stretches because of the dull ache in my hand at the end of the day. More recently it meant stalling for a few minutes at skate practice because I couldn't actually tie my laces. And then a few days ago it finally struck home. It meant I couldn't write, or at least I couldn't use the index finger on my right hand. Not that the index finger is an important digit when used on a QWERTY keyboard.
My word count dropped. My typos skyrocketed, and by the end of the day, I gave up writing entirely. Same went for Friday. My word count was zero. Zero word-count days are sad days. They're the days where the sun remains trapped behind clouds and everything looks gray and desolate. It was a little more terrifying than I let on, too. A couple tweets about it, just to share and maybe gather support, but no hands above my head, run in circles screaming. More just a "What have you done? Why didn't you fix this sooner? You've just ruined your entire life." silent admonition.
Clearly I'm typing today, so something's changed. My wife is a vocal proponent of chiropractics. I am not, having known a few that have made ridiculous claims as to the snake oil they could sell me. Also being forced to see one as a child so we could throw money at not fixing the problem. (A chiropractor found my dad's cancer--it was that far advanced--and my mother got it in her head that they could then cure everything, which they can't.) In this case, however, research shows that manipulation of the hands can actually alleviate carpal tunnel symptoms similar to more direct action applied by medical doctors. I looked all this up, and read about it on reputable sources.
It cost me more than I wanted to pay (to which I am still annoyed), I will have to go back repeatedly over the next month and spend even more money (to which I am annoyed but slightly less because that was expected), BUT I can type again. I had been waking up in pain every morning, but today I woke up just fine and here I am cruising along. I even wrote yesterday and hope to do so again if I can steal some time for myself.
So take care of yourselves people. Don't wait until it's too late. I don't know about you, but I think I would sound like an idiot trying to write with Dragon voice recognition software (and it would make writing on the train particularly awkward).
Carpal tunnel syndrome is probably something most writers will deal with at some point or another and at varying degrees. For me it meant that holding the Chinese take-out bag sucked because pinching hurts. Or it meant doing hand stretches because of the dull ache in my hand at the end of the day. More recently it meant stalling for a few minutes at skate practice because I couldn't actually tie my laces. And then a few days ago it finally struck home. It meant I couldn't write, or at least I couldn't use the index finger on my right hand. Not that the index finger is an important digit when used on a QWERTY keyboard.
My word count dropped. My typos skyrocketed, and by the end of the day, I gave up writing entirely. Same went for Friday. My word count was zero. Zero word-count days are sad days. They're the days where the sun remains trapped behind clouds and everything looks gray and desolate. It was a little more terrifying than I let on, too. A couple tweets about it, just to share and maybe gather support, but no hands above my head, run in circles screaming. More just a "What have you done? Why didn't you fix this sooner? You've just ruined your entire life." silent admonition.
Clearly I'm typing today, so something's changed. My wife is a vocal proponent of chiropractics. I am not, having known a few that have made ridiculous claims as to the snake oil they could sell me. Also being forced to see one as a child so we could throw money at not fixing the problem. (A chiropractor found my dad's cancer--it was that far advanced--and my mother got it in her head that they could then cure everything, which they can't.) In this case, however, research shows that manipulation of the hands can actually alleviate carpal tunnel symptoms similar to more direct action applied by medical doctors. I looked all this up, and read about it on reputable sources.
It cost me more than I wanted to pay (to which I am still annoyed), I will have to go back repeatedly over the next month and spend even more money (to which I am annoyed but slightly less because that was expected), BUT I can type again. I had been waking up in pain every morning, but today I woke up just fine and here I am cruising along. I even wrote yesterday and hope to do so again if I can steal some time for myself.
So take care of yourselves people. Don't wait until it's too late. I don't know about you, but I think I would sound like an idiot trying to write with Dragon voice recognition software (and it would make writing on the train particularly awkward).