rsi

this is about my experience with rsi

i have daily, constant pain in my arms and pinkies. i hate it. this is the second time i’ve had RSI (the first time went away after i implemented a stretching regime before daily starcraft practice). it is depressing and stressful, it makes me worried i won’t be able to do my job. it really sucks in the middle of a pandemic with everything completely online and through a computer.

i also love computers. i spend a lot of time on them for fun, and rsi is taking away much of a hobby i really enjoy during a time when the hobby would be relief from everything else.

this post isn’t really about any one thing; its just me having RSI and talking about it.

what and when it happened

in 2020, in may, i started noticing rsi symptoms. i was halfway through a difficult professional training called the OSCP, and felt i needed to push through. this was a mistake.

i continued to work hard, staying at my computer for 10-14 hours every day. i did see a doctor and looked into options for managing what i was experiencing for the duration of my (several month long) training. the doctor was confident this was a blip, that it was something I could manage, nothing to worry about. i followed his advice, doing stretches, wearing a brace, etc. eventually the pain got so bad i was forced to stop my training, and then take a step back from work.

a digression about rsi and medical understanding of RSI

there isn’t a lot of agreed upon science for rsi. every medical professional has agreed with my official diagnosis of “golfer’s elbow”. i also have all the symptoms of “tennis elbow” (the same thing as golfer’s elbow but on the other side of the elbow, basically). My doctor recommended a brace, my PT recommended never wearing a brace, saying it would make things worse.

this was pretty confusing. turns out, there is not a medical consensus on what, exactly, RSI is. there are some specifics where that’s not true as far as I can tell, carpal tunnel syndrome for instance appears to be more understood than “golfer’s elbow”, but the water still seems to be pretty cloudy. this, i imagine, is what leads to there being no medical consensus about proper treatment. in turn, this seems to lead people to look at alternative medicine. some people swear by acupuncture, some by massage therapy, some by the alexander technique.

what i’ve done

just to list out everything, here’s a non comprehensive list of what i’ve done in pursuit of not having daily rsi pain:

what i’m doing now

in my head i’ve broken down my current self-directed plan into two parts: equipment and process.

equipment list

The desk specific items are are all about preventing further damage to my hands and arms while still allowing me to work.

process

this is mostly about pain management and upkeep. I have a daily routine and then some flex activities to help on specifically bad days. some ✌️😒✌️ experts ✌️😒✌️ opine that rsi is purely psychosomatic, and can be treated by talk therapy and meditation. i personally am willing to believe that there is at least a kernel of wisdom there, though i think that the most famous guy in particular is a fucking liar, so I’m hedging my bets.

what i’m going to do

i am not totally sure. i’m continuing to add to and refine my daily routine. i am about to add in several more body weight exercises, especially upper arm and back focused ones. I’ve only just added in grip training, hoping to simulate rock climbing. i haven’t had RSI when I was climbing, or doing trapeze, or pole dancing. anecdotally, a lot of people on hacker news / the rsi subreddit report that rock climbing helped them tremendously.

i think there’s probably room to add talk therapy to my list of Tried Treatments. i’m not looking forward to it, it’ll cost my a lot of money, time and emotional bandwidth. if it helps i’ll write about it.

prior art, acknowledgements, and references

my brother has written about RSI and how it affected him. he also wrote a website to show his custom keyboard layout and how that’s help him. you can look at that here.

my brother also is currently letting me use his massage gun to help when i have particularly bad days. he’s really great.

this thing was written by someone who also experienced very painful RSI and worked in a similar field. he also reminded me that temperature could be imporant.

this is a book referenced heavily by people looking for non traditional options for rsi treatment. i think this guy is probably a quack. i’m hedging my bets though, and following a lot of his advice. if nothing else, I suspect it is Generally Good for me to be less stressed and to spend time working specifically on meditation and thinking through any mental issues i have.

this subreddit was useful in seeing what other people are doing and if i’m way off base on something. it also showed me that so many people really like dr sarno’s book. christ.