Dear Readers,
I have a secret. A nasty little secret.
I suffer from chronic tendinitis. Mostly in my right wrist.
Tendinitis is inflammation or irritation of a tendon — any one of the thick fibrous cords that attach muscles to bones. The condition causes pain and tenderness just outside a joint. While tendinitis can occur in any of your body's tendons, it's most common around your shoulders, elbows, wrists and heels.
I think I gave it to myself back in animation school. Being on a computer 10 hours a day trying to finish your 3D senior thesis film isn't the greatest thing for your wrists. Spending the rest of your day drawing, tracing, inking, and typing papers certainly doesn't help. When your wrists start to hurt and you work through the pain to finish assignments... well, you get where I'm going here.
In any case ever since art school I've had bad flare ups. They mostly involve massive pain in one wrist or the other, the need to wear a wrist brace, and copious amounts of anti-inflammatory herbs. There have been fewer and fewer periods of pain lately because I try to take good care of my wrists, but every once in a while I have a major flare up. During these times I'll even resort to ibuprofen which anyone who knows me will know that that I don't take pharmaceuticals unless I am in major major pain.
So to give you an idea I have taken four Motrin this morning on top of my herbal regimen. It hurts, my friends. In fact I've just typed this whole post to you with one hand while the other one is being iced with an ice donation from the lovely cafe next door. I won't be finishing my sister's handmade sweater for this Christmas and it's killing me. I hate to resort to a store bought gift for my sister when her sweater is literally two hours away from being finished. It's really killing me and I feel like a horrible sibling for not finishing it sooner.
So my secrets out, Dear Readers. When I stop sewing for weeks at a time you now know why. I'm probably nursing a hurting wrist and my hurting pride.
Do you suffer from similar ailments, Readers? Do any of you bloggers suffer from tendinitis or another blog interrupting ailment? What do you do when you can't sew?
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8 comments:
Get better soon! Rest and massage is the best treatment.
I have no chronic pain, especially, but when I spend significant periods of time sewing or knitting, neck is killing me .... What do I do?? Cursing, swearing, cursing. We still have to realize that we have a body only and when it cries, stop .... I hope you relief soon
Ouch! But yes knitting is seriously out, your sister would not wish you to go through pain for her I am sure.
You poor thing. :( I suffer from dequervain's tendonitis (pretty sure I developed it from tons of computer time and knitting). I have to wear braces on my wrists when it flares up and it's hard to even type, let alone sew or knit. I end up doing a lot of reading. I hope you feel all better soon!
I have the same ailment (I got it from too much piano practice in music school.) I've had to almost give up knitting - I didn't realize how bad it was, but after stopping for a few months my wrists feel amazingly better. Sewing is no issue for me, except for an occasional flare-up if I do too much handsewing. You have my sympathy! One thing that I find helps is to sleep in the wrist immobilizing braces, even when I'm not having a flare-up. Many people sleep with their wrists bent, which can cause more pain for tendinitis sufferers. I hope you feel better soon!
I have the same thing myself, and yes, it hurts and is frustrating. I have to limit my knitting to avoid flare ups. Like Stitchywitch, sewing doesn't bother me except with too much handsewing. I hope it gets better soon!
My hands definitely hurt if I knit too much, but nothing as serious as what you've got :(
I wouldn't resort to store-bought, just give her a nice card saying that her present is taking extra time and love. That's what I do! If she really deserves the sweater, she'll totally understand, especially when it is so close to being done!
Thankfully I haven't had any chronic hand or wrist problems yet (although given that almost everything I do is either typing, drawing, or other intensive hand work, I'm sure it's only a matter of time).
I did give myself nerve damage in my thumb from using dissection scissors too much during an intensive stint working for an anatomy department... those are *not* ergonomically designed!
Would it be worth looking into voice-to-text software? At least you could spare your wrists a little bit of the strain.
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