I continue to have wrist and hand issues, though they are mostly fine as long as I minimize how much I use them. Which mostly means a lot of dictation! Still, it would be good both to understand what is wrong with them and figure out how I can resume some of the activities I enjoy that I’ve stopped.
On 2022-03-04 I started taking 15mg of Meloxicam, daily with dinner. This is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID), which often reduces arthritic swelling. I continued for a month, with my last dose on 2022-04-04. Unlike when I tried Methotrexate, I didn’t notice any changes either when I started or when I went off.
To understand whether there might be a more subtle effect, I also checked my level of finger swelling each morning on waking by clasping my hands and seeing how tight it felt. I rated this feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, and all days were in the range 6 to 9 inclusive:
I take this to mean Meloxicam is very unlikely to reduce my swelling, and may even slightly increase it.
Still trying to figure out what to try next. One candidate is to stop restricting activity, let my wrists and hands get really bad, and then repeat the bloodwork. The hope is that if there are markers that are only elevated when my hands are agitated we might see them then.
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I had terrible wrist pain until I fully switched to a split keyboard, and the final 10% of the pain went away when it became both split and tented. I can relapse with a single weekend of using something truly ergonomically terrible, like a laptop keyboard. But other than that, never think about my wrists any more.
I’m currently using a crazy custom built split mechanical ergonomic keyboard, but the first thing I tried was a Microsoft Ergonomic pseudo-split keyboard, which wasn’t pain free but clearly a huge improvement over a regular keyboard so I kept pushing it.
Interestingly I now also prefer split console controllers like the Switch Joycons and the Oculus Quest controllers. The JoyCons are a little too small, but I still prefer them over a traditional controller or PC games. Any controller that forces a wrist position feels barbaric.
~same. I use a Kinesis Freestyle with 20″ cord, that finally ~fixed my wrists after 4 years, and I’m extremely excited for the Kinesis Advantage360 coming out some time this year.
I stopped using mouse (only touchpad) and it helped much. But it means to switch to a notebook.
I already do this; still using https://www.jefftk.com/p/work-hardware-setup
I had an identical problem. There were two things that worked for me:
I reduced the amount of time I spend typing. 2. Most important, I stopped using a mouse and started using a wacom bamboo pen tablet.