Wednesday, October 18, 2006

RSI never went away...

Another day of procrastination on the rewriting. Instead I did my tax. I must be getting desperate.
I have been spending a substantial amount of time and money lately visiting an osteopath. This came about because of neck problems (and shoulder problems, and lower back problems) and I finally decided it was time to take action.
Turns out that one of my significant problems is a knot of fibrous stuff on a muscle that, funnily enough, is the muscle most likely to be used when ... clicking a computer mouse. About 15 years ago, I managed to get RSI when I was working as a typesetter for a small printing company. A lot of rest, exercise, strength building, and care about keyboard use meant that the RSI has subsided to nearly nothing. Except ... now because I use the mouse a lot more for things like clicking on internet sites, email, online courses, discussion boards etc, I have managed to develop another problem.
And I've known for a long time that I tend to get "computer scrunch" which is generally caused by laptop use (bending the head forward over the keyboard while squinting at the screen). That cliche - all the chickens come home to roost - is taking on new meaning.
So now I will go and read my books on back care and Buddhism (because my stress/tension issues are making things worse), and then I will read my book on wombats (because we have one in the bush - poo piles are the evidence - and because I have a picture book about a wombat that I am working on).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you tried a trackball? I started to get RSI in my arm from using a mouse last year. I I worked out that it was directly related to left-clicking. Besides trying to use the arm in other ways (eg guitar), I bought a trackball (logitech marble mouse) and haven't had any problems since.

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/productlist/AU/EN,crid=2141,categoryid=6

The marble mouse doesn't use any clicking using the index finger.

Sherryl said...

Thanks - will check it out!