I am writing this with three intentions.
- To hopefully help and inspire others who are suffering from RSI.
- To share my experience and educate those unaware of RSI.
- Cathartic reasons. I am still amazed that I am even able to type up this story to share. :)
Oh, how may times I had wished for robot hands!
(Image courtesy Google)
WTF? RSI? Do you really neeed to learn another 3-letter abbreviation?
I was 20 years old and attending my second year of college. I was an internet-using, video gaming, rebellious, handy, and inventive little fucker. This was the year 2004 and I was on track to become an engineer. Yes, I was destined to be in front a computer all day, designing inventions and solutions for a yearly salary while an employer would make then make huge profits exploiting my ingenuity. It was a great life plan and career path undoubtedly full of wonder, danger, sex and magic. Unfortunately, I had no other ideas for a career and I figured since I was skilled at math and science, this was the next logical life step.
However, fuck that. I was also very interested in starting my own business, or traveling the world or just taking the less beaten path for the sake of its less-beaten..ness. I had so much frustration and rage against leading a predictable life as well as some underlying depression from a lack of self-confidence. So, I found a new tool to help me express my want for freedom and disdain of becoming just another cog in a the machine.
My newfound joy!
My guitar was the escape. I quickly learned it and learned it well. I had always been very good with my hands and could probably have become a watchmaker, mechanic, or musician. I didn't want to think about that, though. I just jammed all the time. All the fucking time. It's all I could think about, all I wanted to do, all that felt right in the world was this magical wooden 6-stringed beauty.
One day, I was especially intent on learning the song "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin and I must have spent 3 hours practicing it straight. I will never forget this moment: on the end chorus, I was playing bar chords (which required a strong hand) and I felt my muscles in my right arm just give out. My hand burned. I could feel burning pain from my forearm muscles up through my whole elbow. I stopped playing.
One week later, I went to the doctor because the pain would just not let up. I was prescribed to take 9 Ibuprofen tablets each day for 2 weeks. It helped slightly, but after a month of pain, I went back. I was rather concerned as it hurt to use a mouse. It hurt to type. It hurt to prepare food. It hurt to use utensils to eat. It hurt to do many things that I loved. The pain was a sharp, burning, nerve-jarring sensation that would often last for hours after attempting an activity like using a computer. I would avoid activities, as 5 minutes of use could lead to a whole day of achy dull pain. Fuck the guitar. Fuck video games. Fuck photography, fuck drawing, and fuck computers. The pain made me give them all up.
Note how I wrote "Abort!" on the pick-guard
I went back to the doctor to learn my true diagnosis. I was enlightened to learn the meaning of RSI... Repetitive Strain Injury! Yes, my highly educated and well-meaning doctor told me that schoolwork, computer games, and guitar had taken their toll by continuously injuring my tendons and then scarring my nerves with inflamed tendon tissue. The tendon and nerve scarring was irreversible. This was in the upper dorsal area of my forearm. This is basically the same thing as carpal tunnel syndrome, except in a different area of the arm. All the tendons and nerves run up through the same pathway and over a bony structure near the elbow. The constrictive area became inflamed and thus caused severe damage to my arm. Great.
I am left handed. Luckily I could still draw, take notes, and I even learned to use the mouse with my left hand. My right hand was seriously fucked. I iced it 3 times every day, heated it up 3 times everyday, and massaged it many times every day. Doctor's orders. It was to the point where I could actually use it for 10-15 mins at a time without excruciating pain. Although 2-3 hours later, a long-lasting dull ache would set in. I avoided right-hand activities as much as possible as I was told by several doctors that with RSI, if it hurts, stop the activity to prevent further damage.
Fuck me. it was soon 2005 and my left hand began to exhibit the same symptoms that my right hand did. FUCK! I went back to the doctor and was diagnosed with RSI in my other arm. A different, well-intending, & well-educated doctor told me that putting all the stress of typing, mousing, drawing, writing, and everyday tasks (like eating) had made me overuse my left arm. It had symptoms in the same spot (muscles on top of forearm), as wells as tingling and numbing sensations in my fingers. I was also diagnosed with carpal-tunnel-syndrome in my left hand and radial neuritis in both arms (thusly making it bilateral radial neuritis).
I went to a hand therapist, then to another, and yet another. I got 4 more doctor opinions. All seemed to concur. Fuck me. I couldn't take notes in college anymore. It hurt too much to write. They had assigned me a note-taker that the handicapped students utilized. She kindly took notes for me, but a person cannot really learn unless he is writing notes himself. I couldn't retain the info. I tried every fucking day to do it myself and the pain got worse. I thought about writing and my hands ached. Remember that. How am I going to finish my degree and be an engineer? How can I express myself if all my artistic outlets cause me so much pain?
I would look at this controller and start feeling pain! WTF?!
10 Goddamn Years Pass so Fast.
"Would you like to go ahead and do the paperwork now, or is tomorrow evening better for you?" I ask a middle aged man. Why am I asking him this? Because 10 years have passed since I put down that guitar and now I am selling cars. I have no degree. I dropped out of college because I couldn't write or use the computer anymore. I still have my guitar for sentimental value, but I don't play it. Video games are a rare treat I do play with friends, but I have to give up the controller after 15 minutes.
I eat out a lot, I call my friends for help when I need to move heavy things around, and I watch a lot of movies. I do pick up my camera as it brings me joy. It surprisingly doesn't involve a lot of repetitive motions and I learned to take one bloody photo at a time and I consciously try to conserve finger movements and film. Less film processing means less prints to rifle through and rifling through papers flares up my carpal-tunnel.
Otherwise, I have learned to live my life with minimal hand use. Trust me, once per year I got brave and tried to use my hands to write out an essay or play my guitar and it would result in days of pain. The good news was that I found a job that mostly required talking with minimal computer use, makes me good money, and has a bit of self-guided direction. Plus, I love cars! I used my hands only as needed to get by, and the condition did get better. The hours of dull daily achy pain were gone. Sometimes, I was "reminded" by my hands when I had overused them (usually 15-20 mins of activities) with sharp pains. When I stopped the activity, the pain stopped quickly.
The Descent Into Fear and Madness (and Crypto).
Yes, I had made a good little life for myself. I gave up on the dreams of before and had become more enlightened. Longing for what was, what could've been, and what isn't is truly the meaning of suffering. I let be what is. I accepted all that was. I only lived in the now. And now I was getting fucked, again. How could my RSI make my life more limited this time?
Well, I wanted to use the computer again. I installed Dragon Naturally Speaking software so I could dictate my speech into text. I had the wild idea of writing a screenplay (for fun). I had to get my creativity out somehow. Well, it turned out that I was talking too much. Apparently, I was talking all day at work to customers, talking to my friends, and then talking to my computer. My voice box, tongue, and throat muscles became sore and tired at the day's end (yes, you can make jokes here).
Eventually, I rested it and limited my speaking to work-only purposes. I had learned that with RSI, if it hurts, stop the activity to prevent further damage. I immediately went to a speech therapist and was told that I need to limit voice use as too much will lead to damage. FUCK ME. It's 2004 all over again. I was devastated. I thought, "how in the fuck is my body so fucked up that I always end up with these overuse injuries? Why are my fucking muscles so weak?"
I spent 3 months alone. I spoke to no one. I only spoke to customers to sell cars, so I could have money to live. I watched movies. I isolated myself from my friends. A few weeks before my isolation period, a good friend of mine turned me onto Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. I was interested, but inactive. During my isolation, I researched and actually became a miner, although I could only use the computer for a little bit daily. However, I ended up making some money and having fun doing it. It re-kindled my love for computing, but also my fury at my body for not allowing me to compute. Strangely, bitcon-ing and speaking with customers stopped triggering symptoms. Everything and everyone else did.
The True Power of Your Mind, Man
I've been typing this story non-stop for the last few hours. I have overcome my RSI. How? Well let's first look at the traditional therapies I've tried that didn't provide a permanent solution.
Massage
Heat
Ice
Rest
Vibration Massage
Ultrasonic Massage
Laser and Infrared Light Therapy (yes, this is a real thing
Ergonomic Computer Equipment
Wrist Braces and Straps
Cortisone Injections into my Arms
Stretches, Yoga, and Exercise
Diaphragm and voice tonal control
Salt Water Gargling
These therapies literally cost me over $10,000 personally and surely many times that amount was billed to my health insurance companies. So, what ACTUALLY worked?
I read a book. Yup.
An amazing book by Doctor John Sarno. My real condition, it turns out, is called TMS. It applies to anyone suffering from tennis elbow, carpal-tunnel, RSI, chronic tendonitis, and many kinds of chronic back pain, neck pain, whiplash, and nerve pain..
I came across it in my isolation period researching diseases that lead to lack of muscle stamina and widespread nerve pain. This book described my symptoms and my general personality exceedingly accurately. TMS is short for tension myositis syndrome. There are no long term treatments, money making drugs, or recurring therapies needed to cure TMS. Perhaps, this is why TMS is not taught in medical school.
Let's Go Down the Rabbit Hole
TMS. What is it and how does it fuck your life up? It all starts in your head. TMS causes real pain and the symptoms are real. It's the cause that is mis-diagnosed. The muscles, nerves, and tendons in your body will bring terrible pain to the sufferer, but it's not because of overuse. It's because these tissues are being starved of blood and more importantly, the oxygen contained for delivery therein.
So, the tissues are starved of blood and their oxygen deprivation causes painful symptoms. Why isn't this taught in mainstream medical schools? Because the reason for the starvation is this: the subconscious mind is SELECTIVELY constricting the blood vessels that deliver blood to the tissues in question. Yes, that is correct and I did not mistype.
Why is the subconscious being a fucker? It is mental a survival strategy that your subconscious employs to protect you. Yep. It protects you by causing terrible pain and ruining your life. It does this to distract you. The pain is a distraction. The distraction is to keep you from experiencing repressed emotions (of which you are completely unaware). That is the theory and the basic outline of TMS. Your subconscious brain will cause pain with a BELIEVABLE cause (old injury, something a doctor told you, etc...) by limiting bloodflow to certain nerves or tendons. If you can consciously believe there is a different cause and you consistently treat the condition using physical remedies (ice, massage, etc...), then the subconscious will keep doing this. It has won and the pain is working to keep you focused on it, rather than experiencing the emotions.
In my case, my rebellious and over-achieving attitude caused so much internal turmoil that my subconscious took advantage of what should have been a short term injury (acute tendonitis, like a sports injury) to keep me from being able to express these feelings in creative manners. It used my trust of a doctor's advice that I should back off when pain starts to manipulate me into not doing anything ever again. Oddly and inconsistently, the pain was always associated with a creative or hand-use intensive task. Talking to customers, no pain. Talking to friends, pain. Entering customer data into the work computer, no pain. Playing computer games, pain.
The Cure
I had to accept the diagnosis. Easy. I was ready and wanted to live again. This book had given me hope! All I had to do was something terrifying and constantly tell myself that it's not a real physical injury. I had to keep saying over and over in my head that, "the pain is a distraction and my subconscious is selectively constricting my bloodflow to deceive me." One day in March of 2014, I did two things. Firstly, I moved an old hunk of scrap metal and carried an old water heater from my basement to the end of my driveway. My hands were on fire with pain. My carpal-tunnel was full flare, my nerves and tendons were inflamed. I kept repeating my saying and actually spoke out loud yelling at my subconscious that his tricks won't work anymore. I told him I can face the repressed emotions and be fine. My neighbors must have thought I was crazy.
After a 5 minute pain session that was one of the worst ever, the pain FINALLY stopped! I could not believe it. I called a friend and SPOKE for 45 mins about my newfound wisdom. My vocal muscles stopped feeling tired and were fine. The very next day I went out and bought a new Gibson guitar and promised myself to play guitar every day until I die. I tried many hand-activities and they hurt at first, but I repeated my mantra, believed the diagnosis of TMS and the pain faded. Within a week, I could do almost anything without pain. That's it, one book, one week and 10 years of a debilitating "permanent" injury had been cured!!!
I do it all. I play games, use computers, play guitar, photograph, write, draw, fix things, work on cars, cook. Fucking bring it on. I am happy to do simply boring tasks like filing things or cleaning dishes. I HAVE MY FUCKING HANDS AGAIN! Now, I do still get a small tinge of pain every now and then... maybe once every few months. I simply repeat and BELIEVE my saying and it goes away. I typed this post up over the course of this evening, all in one night. 2 years ago, I would never have believed that I would be able to. I am so grateful for the abilities and the hands that I have.
If you think you have, or know anyone you suspect may have TMS, check out this video from the news program, "20/20." This is NOT required viewing, but may be helpful if you want some more validation of this disease being very real and some insight from Dr. Sarno.
This is the book that quite powerfully changed, and possibly saved my life:
(Image courtesy Amazon)
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please click here to view my blog and photographs and click FOLLOW>.