Quantum Organics

Are they dead?  A colleague recently pointed me to a blog post from October that makes this sensational claim. While I actually agree 100% with the author’s main conclusion, there are some issues that need to be addressed, as there seem to be a couple of important facts that the author seems to have either been unaware of, or conveniently overlooked.  Let’s place the blame where it is deserved. Read more

Man, this blogging stuff is hard!  I started out several months ago with the modest goal of posting once a week, and how many posts have I written?  This is #3.  Pathetic, I know.  So what happened?  I had a work-related injury — my second work-related injury, which is somewhat impressive considering my job involves sitting in front of a computer for hours on end, day after day, and I rarely even leave the house.

About the same time I decided to start blogging, I started getting some pretty significant pain and numbness in my right hand, typically extending from the outside of the wrist up through the tip of my pinky finger and part of my ring finger, occasionally radiating intense pain up the back of my forearm to my elbow.  At the time, I figured it was probably from a combination of resting my wrist on the hard edge of my mouse platform, and too much lateral wrist motion when using the mouse.  I took immediate action, buying new hardware and attempting to reduce my mouse usage.

For the hardware side of things, I replaced my mouse with a Logitech TrackMan® Wheel.  The design was a little awkward to adjust to at first, but it addressed both of my concerns. First, it eliminated the hand/wrist/arm motion required for moving the cursor.  Moving the cursor with the TrackMan is done by scrolling a giant ball with your thumb, while your hand remains stationary.  Second, the larger size of the device helps me maintain a better wrist posture, elevating the joint off of the mouse platform.

My strategy for reducing my mouse dependence had two components.  While working during the day, I practiced using more keyboard shortcuts and memorized them.  While off the clock in the evenings, I practiced staying away from the computer.  That meant no scouring eBay for rare audio recordings, no touching up photos of the kids, and no blogging.

Did it work?  Yes and no — it didn’t continue getting worse but it didn’t really get better, either.  So I finally went to the doctor, who referred me to a physical therapist, who conclusively determined that the problem was due to compression of the ulnar nerve in the elbow, i.e., cubital tunnel syndrome, possibly accompanied by additional compression in the wrist.  The likeliest culprit seemed to be the arm rest of my chair.  I had lost significant strength in my right (dominant) hand, and embarked on a month of physical therapy.  I did exercises to restrengthen my hand, wrist, and elbow, and exercises and ultra sound to help my nerve repair itself.  At the end of my course of treatment, I felt 98% better.

Then it got bad again a few weeks later, despite my new awareness and my ergonomic changes.  Finally, something clicked in my head (figuratively, I think).  I’d gotten into bed one evening and started having the really bad pain from my elbow to my finger, and remembered some questions the therapist had asked when I first went in for my evaluation.  I realized that I’d been sleeping for some time with my right hand under my pillow, my elbow bent in as far as it would go, pinned in place by my giant skull.  I got out of bed, splinted my elbow with a towel, and eventually fell asleep.  I slept with my elbow splinted for about a week and a half, and that seems to have fixed the problem.  I’ve since had a couple recurrences of the pain, but each time that happens, I splint my elbow at night and it gets better pretty quickly.

So now that I’m recovered from that, the holidays are over, and work has slowed down a bit, I’m going to give this another shot.  We’ll see how long it lasts!