Although I've been dealing with chronic pain for two years and the situation looks pretty bleak, I am determined to fix my hands.
Here are the key steps I'm taking.
Resting. I try to avoid doing anything forceful or bearing weight on my hands. For example, when carrying small grocery bags I slip the handles up my shoulder instead of holding them in the palm of my hand. There're tons of little tricks like that to reduce the load.
Doing physical therapy for surrounding muscles. I'm strengthening the neck, shoulders, and back muscles. My forearms and hands are too delicate right now, working them out just puts me at risk for reinjury. Strengthening the supporting muscles helps me maintain better posture. It also gives the body an easier time when doing compensation movements.
Staying constantly hydrated. The problem may be due to cellular health and the fix may come from providing the right environment for tissues to regenerate. So I am drinking coconuts all the fucking time! I also may look into examining my blood work more closely and keeping an even stricter diet.
Wearing wrist splints at night. From what I've learned it seems that restricting movement can be quite dangerous when it comes to these type of injuries. However, at night time I know that I can put my wrists in horrible positions and then fall asleep on them.
Stretching Lengthening.1 The idea is that being more flexible means there is less tension in muscles. This may help alleviate any nerves that are constantly being squeezed.
Learning. Unfortunately this one has been neglected recently, but it's imperative to learn as much as I can about the human body and the anatomy of the hands. My problem is too complicated for doctors to figure out in their routine 20 minute check, so I'm kind of on my own here.
Technique retraining. I'm working on changing the way I type and fixing my workstation to accommodate for my crippled nature. At the moment this mostly means using speech to text.
The future sometimes looks grim but I'm not going down without a fight.
- The word choice emphasizes the gentle nature. [↩]