Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

[Jonathan]

I was diagnosed with CTS in 2001. I had been working as a computer programmer and technical writer, and I was told that I would have to find a new occupation that did not involve heavy use of a keyboard.

From mid 2001 through late 2007 I was either unemployed, underemployed, or in school. I was trying to establish myself in another profession, but had no luck; no one would hire me to do a job in which I had no prior experience. A couple of months ago I went to work as a technical writer again.

So far my hands are holding up pretty well, but I'm concerned about injuring them again. I'm looking for information about measures that will protect them while allowing me to do my job. I'm particularly interested in exercises and adjustments to my working habits, but I'm open to anything that promises to be effective.

Here's some more information about my situation (and I'll supply additional details on request).

My hands do not hurt much; they never did. I have some numbness and loss of strength and dexterity, much more in the left hand than the right. The numbness is mainly in the facing halves of the index finger and the middle finger. It gets worse when I type, but returns to "normal" after a few hours at most.

I had carpal tunnel release surgery on the left hand early in 2002, but it yielded little improvement. I consulted an orthopedist about 6 months ago. He had a CAT scan done. He told me that the first surgery had left scarring which could be cleaned up by an additional procedure, and that this would make me feel more comfortable, but it probably would not improve my sensation or dexterity, or make the hand less sensitive to injury.

At work I typically spend most of my time typing, but I rarely type continuously, as a data entry person would. Typically I type steadily for part of a minute, stop to think or to check something, then type again. Every hour or two I get a longer break when I turn to some other task such as research or interviewing. I estimate that I spend about 1/3 of my working time actually hitting keys, and during peak periods of 1/2 hour or more that rises to 2/3 or 3/4 of my time.

I have been using speech recognition software for several years, but for the type of work I'm doing it is not very helpful. Much of my work involves typing numbers, codes, and short phrases into lists and tables, or editing and formatting text. I have found that speech recognition only works well for dictating whole sentences in English.

[robinmarie]

I was a data entry operator for 7 years and a computer programer for another 9. Somewhere in the 5th year of data entry I discovered I had CTS. I did two things to help my situation. First I started treating the keyboard as a piano. Pianists hold their hands high and keep the palm even with the wrists. My piano teacher called it walking like a cat on the keys. It lasted through my 9th year as a COBOL programmer. When even that didn't work, I went to computer consultant. In that job I barely typed at all. Instead it was teaching, setting up computers, trouble shooting, recommending computers, setting up networks... That lasted me another 20 years. Finally I started my own software company. I was CEO and that lasted me until I retired.

So as you can see, you can continue in the computer field. Let me give you a warning, though, if you have no sales skills you won't be able to make it in consultancy. I never did make a lot of money at it. I was a lousy seller. Anyway, good luck with your job search.