How to Prevent Repetitive Stress Injury

It's the writer's nightmare - being unable to write.

We may have progressed in technological capability, from painstakingly portrayed hunts and rituals with blood and plant dyes on cave walls to writing longhand with our feathered quills dipped in ink to manual typewriters to the almighty word processing programs. Some authors even use voice command programs to dictate to a document that records their words. Still, if we don't want to go there, writers take care of our hands.

Thus this week's topic, Preventing repetitive stress injury - writer physical ailments and how to prevent/combat them


If martial artists have to register their hands as deadly weapons (bunk, btw, just Google and be appalled at how many links and discussions there are!), then I sometimes think I'd love to insure mine as critical tools of my trade. Instead, I do everything I can to preserve their health.

Pretty much the same thing.

Fortunately, in one of my more brilliant life-decisions, I encouraged David to start a second career as a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, so he gives me lots of good advice and help on natural preventatives and cures. I know, however, that not everyone has access to in-house acupuncture and liniments, though I highly recommend seeking out professionals for that help.

A simple thing everyone can do is adress ergonomics, as shown in the photo above. Many of you already know I have a treadmill desk. I took this pic (after many failed attempts) while standing on the treadmill at the desk. The desk top itself is quite large and is hydraulic, so I can adjust the height in minute increments. I try to work with my elbows at about a 120 degree angle (though I vary it, to prevent my joints from locking into a habitual position) and with my forearms flat and wrists straight, not bent. This works wonders to keep my wrists from getting stiff and sore - which they did at one point, before I got smarter. 

I've also gone back to an external mouse instead of using the touch pad, because the touch pad makes me bend and crimp my wrists too much.

Also, there's this exercise from kung fu (I forget which style), that is great for preventing and eliminating carpal tunnel syndrome and other related repetitive stress injuries. My highly professional video is below. Feel free to ask questions, if it's not clear!

Fighting the Decrepit

Decrepit.

In my head, I always hear it with the small town Carolina accent of my dad's family. DEE-crpiht.

As in, "that there's a DEE-crpiht shack. Someone oughta tear it down."

Or, "that schoolhouse has gone past DEE-crpiht. I done told the schoolboard."

Mostly, in my grandmother's voice, "I am just gone and DEE-crpiht."

Like those shacks and schoolhouses, my grandmother gradually crumbled under the oppressive heat and humidity of the South. Not a growing thinner and more brittle kind of decline, as with my Colorado grandmother. No, this was a Southern one, where she grew heavier and lost limbs to the rotten rampages of diabetes, as if she'd been overgrown with the kudzu vines of poor diet and nonexistent exercise.

I share her physiology. Every year seems to make the struggle against encroaching weight and flabbiness that much more difficult. I eat (mostly) well and put the miles in on my treadmill desk, but she's on my mind. The "crepit" in decrepit is from the Latin crepare, to make a noise.

I make the noises she did - the groan in bending over. The snap-crick of my joints. I relive her legacy even as I fight it. All these things I inherited from her - the stubborn Scottish smarts, the love of sugar and a long conversation, the tendency to comfortably thicken and spread.

She'd laugh to see my treadmill desk. She'd shake her head at me and tell me to come sit down, have a glass of sweet tea.

But I won't. I drink my tea unsweet and I walk on. Staving off the onslaught of the vines.