Inside the Mind of Super G

I’m trying to remember, but I think the first time I went to see a doctor was at the walk in clinic in the west side Santa Cruz. This was around January 2001, I think. I saw a Dr. Pollard that day. He quickly looked me over, and after I told him that I was using the computer a lot and also driving heavily (I was driving for 6 hours straight to Davis and back every other weekend), he concluded that I had epicondylitis, or, in laymans terms, tennis elbow. I was given a device that put compression on my forearm (it looks kinda like a slap wrap with velcro). It’s supposed to make the muscle not move or something, which will then allow it to heal. The doctor reassured me that it would be fine, and to try to lay off the computer. I was kind of worried, but I didn’t see anyone else need this, so I thought it would be totally temporary and that I’d spring back, no problem.

So I laid off the computer a bit and tried to drive more ergonomically (don’t ask me how I did that), and I felt the muscle get better. At least it seemed like it was getting better. Whenever I wasn’t using the computer, it was ok. But when I would use the computer, it would flare up almost immediately. But I was confident. “I’m young, I’ll get better.”

But then I noticed the same thing starting to happen on my left arm. Damn this was starting to suck

i thought i’d fill in with some of my history that led up to this blog. I think I’ll start back in late 2000. I’ve always been a computer person, macs in particular, so I guess you could say that I did a fair amount of typing and mousing. That was back in the good old days of Napster, so I was on the computer all the time trying to get music.

I also had a job at UCSB in the computer labs doing email tech support, so much of my day was spent on a computer. Anways, at some point I noticed a twinge of pain in my right forearm. “Huh, that’s weird”, I thought to myself. I couldn’t really remember doing anything to cause this. I kinda forgot about it and continued doing whatever I was doing. The twinge eventually went away, or so I thought.

A few days later, it came back. The twinge got kinda worse, and I noticed that it got worst whenever I was using the computer. I was like, “What the hell?” I’m 21 years old, this can’t be happening to me! I knew a ton of people at work who used computers way more than I did and they were fine. “It’ll go away”, I told myself (Isn’t denial fun??). But it didn’t. It got worse. It was feeling all inflamed and way too painful to do much. I had to see someone.

This blog is going to be about my journey through recovering with rsi. You might be asking yourself, “hey buddy, if you have rsi, why are you typing? You should stop and rest up!” The thing is, I’m on my way to recovery, and this blog can thusly serve two purposes, or possibly more.

First, I hope I can help people who have been in extreme pain like I have. You can get better! I already am. Maybe my tale of woe will be recognizable to some people who are where i was 4 years ago. Yes that’s right I’ve been battling this for years. And I’m a young guy!

Second, me getting out my thoughts and feelings about my journey and other things has been therapeutic, so why not get those thoughts out into the open so everyone can read them?

Third, my entries will be a good way to see how much I can type at once. It used to be so bad that I could only go a few minutes before pain would shoot down my arms. I’ll get more into that later.

Also, I want to test how well wordpress works, so this will be fun running the software as well.

ok, more to come!

Yay. I was able to install WordPress. I thought these things were supposed to be all hard to install. Well I was wrong. Now I’ve got something to show at the meeting on monday!!