My RSI Story

[cookie]

Hello there,

I had RSI for almost a year, now I am pretty fine, I would say 95% recovered!
I am able to work fulltime again without taking breakes every 45 minutes.
I can play guitar again without pain, fatigue and the fear it might come back.

I read a lot about this disease and can tell you what helped me to overcome this.
I had nearly 10 different doctors during that preiod without any success.
I had acupuncture sessions with temporary pain relief.

First of all you have to accept one simple truth:
The pain you have and the fatigue you feel is the way how your body communicates with you. It's some kind of signal you should better listen at... Yeah I know, sounds simple but it isn't. Your body is simply telling you that something is goin wrong.

I believe that you can recover or at least improve your living quality dramatically by just listen to your body and change all that bad behaviour what causes your pain.

I noticed one strange thing while reading all the blogs and forums about RSI. Everybody is complaining about how annoying it is and that the pain came from one day to the next. But this is simply NOT TRUE! It takes a long period of bad posture, bad behaviour unhealthy living style, terrible nutrition, stress and pressure in life to develope RSI. And your body and especially your mind needs time and rest to recover. People are so focused on the problem RSI and the pain but forget to look around and notice what they are doing wrong.

The hard part is to understand what exactly causes the problem. Let's use my situation as examlpe.
I am a professional software developer, passionate gamer and guitar addict. before I get RSI my day looked something like this:
Waked up by 2 phones, one alarm clock and the TV alarm, realized I am late (somwhere between 10-12 am)
Rushing into the bathroom
Driving like a total idiot to work (Hugry as hell, breakfast is for waklings)
Coding like a boss for 5 hours straight
Picking up lunch and take it to my desk
After 5 minutes of "high speed food injection" coding for another 3 to 5 hours
Driving back home feeling like shit...
Without RSI: Playing guitar/games like a maniac for a few hours without brakes
With RSI: Playing games for another 3 to 6 hours to improve my shitty mood... Guitar hurts like shit...
Killing myself with dinner
Watching TV
Sleeping.... ( 4 maybe 6 hours)

This went for almost 3 years, and I can't believe that I did't realize earlier how unhealthy and bad that was!
My RSI first appeared on the guitar so I thought it has to do something with that. Instead of playing guitar I now played games like crazy because not being able to pick up my guitar frustrated me so hard that I had to compensate it with games. Say hello to the doom loop! All that drove me to the point that I couldn't work anymore... I had pain all the day, typing was like HELL and I got serious fear for my existance (The Fear boosted the RSI like crazy). Another problem was my job, lot of responsibility, lot of pressure and bad payment... And another another big thing was the relationship with my GF wich I ruined because of my bad mood and uncaring behaviour.

I hit rock bottom...

I got a new job.
I started to work out again. Running, swimming, cycling. I try to do one of them at least twice a week.
After work I stopped using my PC, screw it... gaming and all that stuff simply does't worth it.
I started to sleep at least 8 hours a night. 10p.m is bed time and I don't give a shit if the stuff on TV is interesting or not.
I dropped all my guitard pretty low to reduce the force while playing.
On weekends I go out with my friends instead of sitting infront of my computer.
I eat regularly.
I stopped drinking coffee.
I stopped drinking softdrinks, juices and all that stuff filled with sugar (Only water for me Sir!)
I bought a propper seat.
I improved my desktop at home and at work.
I use the Microsoft ergo 4k at work (But will replaced soon by a mecha with light swiches, brown, red, maybe blacks)
I stopped stretching and twisting my arms to the point of pain to check if it's gone (REALLY BAD HABIT, DON'T DO THIS!!!!!)

And the most important point:
I accepted my disease and the fact there is no way to heal it overnight.

And the last point, me and my dearly beloved girlfriend broke up the relationship. This step hurts me the most but after all, I realized it was necessary and a good decision.

I hope I can help you guys to handle your RSI and to give you a different point of view.
I believe that good input devices and an ergonomic desktop can help a lot and can delay/prevent RSI but I also believe that you can have the most ergonomic desktop, the most advanced keyboard, the state of the art seat but without a healthy lifestyle you will never get better.

Greetings

[Ascaii]

TLDR: Dump your girlfriend and RSI will disappear...


In all seriousness...I do agree with most of your points, but others are not related to RSI, just your new self-image.

Yes, a healthy change in lifestyle can work wonders, but don't underestimate the power of your brain and auto-suggestion. I like to think that a large part of RSI is a like reverse placebo, which you seem to have experienced with your fear/frustration loop. Getting rid of the stimulus can usually get rid of the imagined part of RSI, which you seem to have done.
The physical RSI, as the name suggests, is an INJURY...meaning you definitely NEED the right tools and exercises to fix it.
Someone with a broken leg wont go jogging, nor should an RSI sufferer go back into the areas that caused the injury without a change of habits and, in the computer case, input devices. A good chair, desk, and keyboard are crucial (in my opinion).

Enjoy your new lifestyle =D

[cookie]

I totally agree with you, the phisical part of RSI is an injury and you indeed need the right tools and exercises to fix it. But all this will not work if you have such a bad lifestyle like I had. Don't get me wrong but In my case I just had to stop allt his stupid things, let my arms rest and change the way I work and I spend my free time. Now I am working on my posture and strenghten my muscles in my arms and my back. Most people underestimate the static load your body has during work with your computer and only a healthy body can stand that.

Changing bad habits, and get a new self image can help with the psychological part.

And dumping your GF will not solve RSI you missunderstood me there... but this is an other story!

My goal is to motivate people to take initiative and kick RSI in the balls!
Because there is hope and it will get better after a while, you will have ups and downs but at one point there will be more ups than downs and you will be fine again.

[kint]

Ascaii was kidding I take it.

I've been spared from RSI up to now, but have lots of other stuff no person my age should suffer from. I blame bad genes and looking at my parents remain frightful of what's still to come.

Just don't be static, that's in almost all cases bad. Sitting monolithic in front of input devices (even extraordinaire ones) results in your body telling you that he wasn't designed for such a task. Healthy and a happy lifestyle is important even if it doesn't benefit ones RSI.
But there's even more hope, saw an interesting TV documetary few days ago. Topic was something around how our brain messes up with tasks and impressions and how that can benefit healthcare. But one argument was clinical studies about placebo effects on surgical problems regarding knee joints, arthrosis afair.
They picked several testees, all in need of a surgical operation, even some Pro athletes. Some got the operation, some just received a placebo operation with all the usual stuff, narcosis, instrument insertion, recovery, scars, so on.
Interesting thing was: All of them claimed they had no more problems from the day they recovered onwards, even the athletes that just received a placebo operation were still free of complaints years after the op and back in business.
So never underestimate the awesome human body, what it can take, and always take a wider look than just spotlight onto the pain itself.

[Brian8bit]

You could have condensed your tale to "move more, eat and drink less shit" and it would have got the message across.

[ripster]

Funny, drinking good shit helps MY pain.

[RC-1140]

Well, I have started thinking about diseases like these in the last few months as well, and I'm afraid I have to visit an orthopaedist sooner or later as well. I don't think I suffer from RSI, but nearly all my joints hurt whenever I move. I ride bike everyday and play guitar, and especcially after playing guitar my knuckles and wrists hurt alot. But as I said, all my joints hurt. My knees, my elbows, my shoulders, my ankles. Also I suffer some back and heavy neck pain. All of this isn't unbearable, but I don't want to make it worse by ignoring it. I've started setting my working chair into more ergonomic and not more comfortable positions, and try to get rid of the bad postures I surely have.