Working & RSI
About 9 months ago I developed a pain in center of my palm in my left hand while using my computer. The pain started as an ache then grew into something that would keep me up at night. I work in application security and spend a lot of time at a computer for work and more for personal projects. I spend easily 12 hours a day on a computer. I thought that I was experiencing carpal tunnel syndrome, the common cause of hand and wrist pain for heavy computer users. The pain continued and got worse over the next few months. Being stubborn, I didn’t immediately see a doctor, instead I bought a cheap wrist brace to see if that would help. At first it did but the pain still continued to get worse after a time. I finally caved in and saw an orthopedist. After a quick test of my wrist for carpal tunnel that didn’t result in the typical tingling symptoms, he prescribed some medicine and said to adjust my workspace to see if that would help.
I was using an Apple keyboard and trackpad. The Apple keyboard is a pretty decent keyboard but it is not very ergonomic. The weight of my arms and hands laid squarely on the center of my palm where the pain was. After struggling to find any adjustments I could make to my setup I started looking for an ergonomic keyboard.
Although I didn’t love the idea of spending a huge amount on a keyboard I found a few models that seemed decent. First I tried a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard; the Sculpt Ergonomic. At only ~$70 it’s not too bad.
I actually quite like this keyboard at first. I didn’t have to adjust my typing too much and with OS X modifier keys I could make it mirror my Apple keyboard pretty well. The main issue I found with this keyboard was that my left palm would rest right on the end of the pad and caused the same pain as before. There were some minor annoyances with the lack of proper media keys as well. So I started looking for an alternative.
I then tried out the Kinesis Freestyle2 Blue for MAC.
The freestyle offers a lot of layouts to better fit what’s comfortable for you. You can have various amounts of separation and with the optional accessory kit you can have three settings of ‘tenting’ and great palm supports. I highly recommend the accessory kit.
My (cleaned up) setup:
I’ve tried the various tenting settings and have been using the highest setting recently. The quality of the keyboard is a bit lacking, especially for the price tag but the configurability is key. The click of the keys reminds me of my old Dell keyboard. The keyboard works well enough and has about the same layout as my Apple keyboard and extra hotkey keys on the left to reduce mouse usage. I haven’t used them once though.. I haven’t been using it long enough to comment on how long the battery lasts but I’ve had no issues so far. The tenting helps reduce pressure directly on my palm. This has greatly reduced the pain after typing all day. It hasn’t completely stopped the pain though.
Kinesis also has another keyboard that’s received great reviews by people suffering from the same issues; The Advantage:
I haven’t tried this keyboard but have read a few reviews that rave about it and how ergonomic it is. If the Freestyle doesn’t work out I may give it a shot.
Another solution I found is a piece of Software called RSIGuard. RSIGuard reminds you to take breaks at set intervals. By default those are every 50 minutes but it’s adjustable. RSIGuard is a bit pricey at $65, especially for a piece of software that isn’t the cleanest design and a bit buggy but I think it’s worth the money. RSIGuard will tell you to take a break and do some stretches, stand up and look around to loosen up. Even without RSI I think it’s a good tool to break up the monotony of working for long stretches.
So, to wrap up, RSI sucks. It’s caused a decent bit of pain, limited my ability to work and is not the easiest issue to fix. I’m still working on figuring out how to limit the issue but I’ve made a good bit of progress to reduce the pain and start healing. If I had addressed the issue sooner I think I would have healed much faster and dealt with less pain. Injuries like this are nothing to mess with and has forced many people to change careers. Hopefully some of this can be useful to someone else dealing with similar issues.
Good luck!
