Anyway, my wrist problems eventually went away after I used wrist braces for a few years and therapy putty, and left that job. But I do have problems every now and again, most often when I’ve been using a mouse a lot rather than the keyboard. And small adjustments really do help; at my current gig, just finding a new place to put my mousepad helped enormously.

Incidentally, I found out somewhere that there are something like 300 or 500 different forms of tendinitis that can affect the hands, because they’re so complex. I did see an occupational medicine specialist, and carpal tunnel was ruled out, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have one of those other forms. Unfortunately, I lost that job with the 70s-era computers and couldn’t afford the COBRA payments, so I never did get a diagnosis.

I’m currently going through a very long and very painful bout of sciatica. Granted, I slipped a disk one year while I was moving, but sitting for long periods with legs crossed under does not help. I’ve had to give up weightlifting, especially my beloved deadlifts, spend most evenings lying on the sofa with an ice pack on my hip and visit my chiropractor every other week to be poked and prodded and zapped with electrodes.

I’m at the point where I’m seriously considering giving up the law and becoming a dogwalker because at least then I would not have to sit.

Have I mentioned how much I love aging?

Using a mouse for Photoshop/Excel/CAD/etc was really the worst thing for me. What fixed that was getting a tablet to use instead of the mouse for CAD and graphics stuff, but maybe you already have one (if you don’t, they’re a little expensive, like $100 for the lower-end Wacom kind I have).

With the wrist braces, tablet, and maybe an ergonomic keyboard, I can go for hours and hours and hours. It used to be that things started burning about 20 minutes into my programming homework.