INQ hack reviews Repetitive Strain Injury

TO THOSE WHO ARE OWED AN E-MAIL BY ME, or who have been wondering why we've been a writer down for most of the last two or so months, I must apologise. I've been busy conducting a hands-on investigation into RSI - Repetitive Strain Injury.

Of course, I wasn't actually planning on doing this; I may be dedicated to the cause of journalism, but that would be ridiculous. However, it would be rude of me not to pass on some words of caution to our readers, given that you are presumably the type of people who spend many hours using computers. At a guess!

So how did I get it? For starters, I've heard just about every variation of the pr0n joke, and no, it wasn't that. On a recent foreign jaunt, my company Acer died on me, and so I was forced to use my personal Media Centre (sic.) PC as a workstation, while my other job, not I hasten to add The Inq nor VNU, fannied about not trying particularly hard to provide me with the equipment that I actually needed to do my job.

Now I'm sure we've all skim-read the horrendous-sounding warnings on the incorrect use of keyboards and mice. My MS keyboard has almost the whole of its back taken up with an essay on the subject of ergonomics with nasty bits in bold. However I tend to pay as much attention to these as I do to the average manual. Which is not a lot.

However, in my mind, RSI was a disorder that one would get over a period of many years of poor working practices, rather than a short burst of doing something silly.

Well, up until this point, I have had no problems, and rarely was in any discomfort while using a PC and therefore, I didn't think twice about using a "desk" about 12 inches too low (an Ikea hifi cabinet), nor about sitting on the world's least practical office chair: the edge of my bed. After all it was just going to be for a few days.

The days waiting for my IT department to do anything turned into nearly three weeks, during which I contorted my body into all sorts of unusual positions, attempting to finish schematics and churn through long spreadsheets of components, and working from about 8am through to 11pm with barely a break. It didn't hurt, it just wasn't particularly comfortable.

Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, this was particularly stupid, and I should not have been surprised when my right hand started to die on me, and I got a null pain and felt a complete lack of energy, completely stopping me using it.

Sadly my usual treatment for ailments of a Glenmoranjie and a good night's sleep did nothing, and come the morning, I could still not use my right arm at all. So I did what any good engineer would do, and improvised, moving the mouse to my left hand. That lasted about 2 hours before the left hand, too, gave up the ghost.

Essentially, my wrists were being lifted up too far to use the keyboard and mouse, because of the height difference. This put a large amount of compression on my carpal tunnel, the bones in the top of your wrists, and placed tension on the tendons, causing rubbing. They didn't like it very much.

It was at this point that I sought medical attention. Well, that is if the GPs that earn their hundreds of thousands a year prescribing antibiotics to everybody, regardless of their disorder, can be classed as medical attention.

The official advice: take some ibuprofen and get back on with your life. Brilliant. Nice one.

Needless to say, the following two months I tried to rest for most of the day, took long baths, sorted out my desk and got a proper chair, and trained up Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software. I've also seen several independent experts, and have been having regular acupuncture sessions despite a strong aversion to most "alternative medicine".

For the first month or so, it got worse and worse, the pain moving up my arms, and around into my neck and back. The pain varied between shooting, stabbing pains, feeling swollen, coldness, heat, numbness, and usually extreme tiredness like when you've done too much exercise. Little seemed to help at all, even massive doses of ibuprofen and "voltarol" anti-inflammatory gel.

I am 27, relatively fit and highly motivated. To lose the use of both your arms, and be unable to do the simplest of things, let alone do your work, is the most crippling feeling ever, and I now have even more admiration for those who suffer permanent disabilities.

Experts who I have seen have all generally agreed on the following:

• Bodies aren't really designed to use computers.
• RSI is not understood very well. It's a loose term used to describe many different problems that tend to go together, and are caused by similar things.
• There's not a whole amount anybody can do about it when you get it.
• You need to rest. Really.
• Bad physiotherapy will make it worse.
• If you're young, and don't have a history of musculo-skeletal problems, you stand a better chance of getting better.
• Here's the bill, see you again next week for some more repackaged common sense.

I can count myself relatively lucky. After this long, depressing period of rest, I have recovered to a state where I can, at least, do my job vaguely, and drive myself from A to B. This is considerably better than I was a few weeks ago.

But I still need to take breaks every 10 minutes, or the pain and tiredness becomes too much to bear. I hope it will continue to get better, but it's stabilised recently and often it's one of those disorders where, when you have got it, you cannot ever completely get over it; just manage the symptoms.

So please, if I could give any advice to you, it would be these following simple points:

• Bosses: Give your employees the damned equipment they need to work. The time and money you could lose through not providing this are immense.
• Chairs: arrange your chair so the tops of your legs are angled slightly down so your back is forced up into a good position. Sit with your hips vertically aligned.
• Go read about the Alexander Technique if you can be bothered, but don't worry if you can't. Just try not to slouch.
• Keyboard and mouse: don't rest your wrists on the table. Don't. Seriously. Wrists should be pretty much in line with your forearms. Put your palms on the desk and they'll bend upwards, messing everything up.
• Don't ignore the pain, but don't expect it. Like me, you may not get any warning signs until it's too late. Take plenty of rest.
• Drink lots of water. The water lubricates the joints and tendons. Which is good.
• Whisky may cure all other diseases, but it doesn't cure this one.
• Have a look into voice recognition; it's a lot better than it used to be.
• Don't spend your life reading about RSI on the Internet. You'll get depressed pretty quickly!

Or to sum up: it's not very nice - try not to get it. ?