What I learned today

[marcmagus]

What I learned today:

• I've been stretching wrong all these years. Specifically, stretching with counter-pressure (such as by grasping your fingers and pulling back to stretch the wrist), which it may be helpful in averting athletic injury, can actually exacerbate swelling of the tendons.
• While cold is good for reducing swelling, ice can cause/exacerbate nerve damage. (In this case, I was right to avoid ice, but wrong to avoid cold.) Heat may reduce joint stiffness, but increases swelling.
• My elbows are much higher than I think they are. What feels like my arms are level is something like a 15 degree angle. This means I should be keeping my keyboard at a height which makes me feel like it's practically at my chin. (It really isn't.)
• My shoulder blades are at times significantly out of whack. This is probably directly contributing to the problems I've been having, whether or not it's a root cause.
• The way I sleep probably exacerbates this, too. The way I sleep, as we already discovered, is almost certainly exacerbating the ulnar issues.
• I should be getting regular massage to help me heal from my RSI. Even though the chances of my getting either my Worker's Compensation coverage or my regular health care coverage to cover any portion of the cost are close to nil. I knew this one, but it was, shall we say, emphasized.

All in all, a really positive meeting with the OT. She didn't waste time on stuff I already knew, and had a lot of things to say which seemed very on-point.

ETA: Not from today, but this made me think of it. uridium, the arm numbness/paralysis thing is probably ulnar nerve related. (That was you, right?)

Comments

[uridium.livejournal.com]

My arms don't really get numb, although they get sore sometimes. Mostly I get to get a numbness or sensitivity in my fingertips. I haven't actually been bothered by anything for a little while, although that probably just means I'm compensating for something unconsciously by doing something even worse...

Did the OT come to your office, or was it more like going to a doctor's office?

[marcmagus]

I'm remembering a conversation from back at Vassar when a few of us were hanging out and laughing and suddenly both of my arms went numb from the elbow down, and at first people thought I was joking. In my memory you were the first one who recognized that I was serious, and you had either had, or knew someone who'd had, a similar experience; something to do with hyperventilating. It's possible I'm misremembering that, though.

Which fingertips do you get numbness in?