Friday, March 27th, 2009 | Author: admin
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Ethan B posted
Does anyone know of any pain relief measures for carpal tunnel?
Does anyone know of any pain relief measures for carpal tunnel?
I am at a point that my doctor now says I must have surgery. I am a secretary and therefore I am at the computer at least 8 hours a day. I wear the braces at night, I’ve tried different topical creams from drug stores and nothing gives me relief.
Category: Pain & Pain Management
Monday, 30. March 2009
If it’s possible for you to work I would suggest wearing the braces during working hours. This is going to help a lot. the best at home treatments are placing a moist heating pad on your wrists for twenty minutes and afterwards applying an analgesic cream, massaging it into your hands as much as you can. Wait fifteen minutes then place an ice pack on the wrists. You can do this several times a day. It would be good to do before you go to work. If you’re not already taking an Anti inflammatory medication, I would recommend you do so.
if you have any further questions please let me know.
Tuesday, 31. March 2009
Topricin cream works well for my wrists, though it is expensive still it’s worth it for me. Definitely a prescription anti-inflammatory does wonders, I’m taking indomethacin, but the first few I tried didn’t work so keep trying til you find something that works for your body, if you and your doctor agree to try one. Braces, day and night, but a long, stiff steel-boned brace at night and a shorter, neoprene brace during the day. If you wear a stiff brace during the day, you will likely end up straining against the braces as you try to work with your hands, which is incredibly damaging. Exercises, of course, my favorite has been getting a very soft squishy pair of balls and squeezing them slowly and carefully, eventually working my way up to a real (harder-to-squish) stress-ball. Physical therapy with a hand and wrist specialist has also REALLY helped. A hot wax bath, used daily before and after exercises also does wonders. A new keyboard, I got lucky and was given the absolute most ergonomic keyboard ever invented, the datahand (www.datahand.com). It’s way expensive (a thousand dollars) but dear gods what a difference it made. Also, my friend bought me a wacom intuos pen tablet to replace my mouse, which has been very good. I alternate between the pen tablet, a special mouse fitting to my small hands, a foot mouse, a touchpad, and a trackball, which gets real expensive but again, was worth the cost to me. Acupuncture helped me a little, but wasn’t woth the stress over my needle phobia. It may work for you. Cortisone shots in my wrists and shoulders helped for a few months, but not long-term. Dragon Naturally Speaking, a voice recognition software, combined with the datahand, kept my hands off keyboards and mice and once trained, is even able to cope with my upper division university biology and psychology research papers!
But it sounds like you are beyond any of that working, like I was years ago. All the things I mentioned above, they help up to the point where your hands are too badly damaged to do exercises. If you’re there, the above might ease the pain a little, but only one thing (short of surgery, which I refused entirely) will really get your wrists to heal. That is not using your hands AL ALL (as in, not even thinking of touching a computer, brushing your hair, zipping zippers, opening bottles, etc) for as long as it takes for you to heal. It took me about two years. I moved in with my friends, and they became my hands, literally. After two years, I used all of the above to continue the healing and to prevent further damage. I never got surgery, and at this point although my wrists still hurt, it’s nowhere near the pain it was before. And, I can actually type for about five minutes on a “microsoft natural” split keyboard, when I have to. The datahand and voice recognition are what I stick to most of the time though, as my wrists still won’t be happy otherwise.
As far as surgery goes, do NOT get it done until you’ve gotten a second opinion, and possibly a third as well. And that, from doctors that are not in the same clinic or hospital, if at all possible. Surgery, as has been discovered, is really only a temporary relief and quite possiblycan make things even worse in the long run, so it should be a kind of “last resort” when all other therapies have failed. In my opinion, at least, and my many doctors’ opinions (except the first doctor I saw!). Be very careful to research surgery and non-surgery options fully before making that decision. And, the surgery will do MUCH more harm than good if you jump right back in to typing like you did before…. There is of course, also the potential of the surgery going badly, which in a worst case scenario, could leave you with completely non-functioning hands. Not very likely, but it is a possibility you need to be aware of. There is the chance that surgery would be very helpful too, but it needs to be just one part of our healing process. All of the above, and many things that I’m sure I am forgteting, must also be used to help heal your hands and in the long run to prevent further damage.
Good luck, and hopefully things work out for you and that your hands heal quickly!
I’d be happy to send you a copy of dragon naturally speaking 9 for you to try out, if you want. But you’d have to buy a copy if you want to keep using it. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of the datahand keyboards no longer makes any, but you might be able to find a used one for sale somewhere.
Hope this helps, and feel free to email me if you have any questions about any of this, I’d be glad to help out seeing as I’ve been there too..