My newfound love for City of Heroes which has seen me come perilously close to cat-assery at times(“yeah, I can play for six hours straight, I got nothing better to do tonight”) has had another side effect. A couple of days ago after a gaming session my right wrist felt sore and hurt. I’ve had occasional pains in my wrists before, but a wrist support and a regular switch of mousing hand has usually kept it at bay. This time however the pain lasted all day, and I still felt it the next day. Now, the day after this I travelled to my parents for the Midsummer holiday so I’ve pretty much had no computer time since then which is probably for the best.
I wonder though, how serious is this and should I consult a doctor?
Do not take it lightly. If you get RSI/OOS/whatever bad, it can be permanent. I find doing lots of stretches whenever it starts to twinge is good, as is swapping mouse hands.
CoH is the worst game I have for this, but I can’t tell if it is the particular motion of the game or the time I end up playing it, which is longer than a FPS session would be.
I had a lot of soreness when I started a lot of heavy PC work in my former life. A lot of numpad usage and typing. I did not have the mousing problem, but a similair pad that ran the length of my keyboard helped more than I could have imagined.
Something about that slight bend your wrists take from being level with your forearm to the keyboard/mousing postion and then the lifting of the fingers making it more pronounced can cause some serious pain.
Use the other hand. Also extend your hand, like by sitting on it, if it gets clenched and painful. Soak in cold water.
Sometimes, occasionally, if i game for a whole weekend i get pre-symptoms of CTS, and those steps have corrected it every time. The trick is to stop using it NOW and let it heal up. It should go without saying that if your doing something that is causing you repetitive pain to simply stop doing it.
Absolutely not. That’s why, the next time you have a pain in any part of your body, you should send me the $20. In return, I’ll send you a specially encoded email that, when you open it and read it, will flash energy waves at the body part in question relieving it of all pain permanently - or until I spend the twenty bucks, whichever comes first.
I should tell you, however, that if the pain is in your cock it’s gonna cost more than $20. I charge more for the kinky stuff.
Stopping is the hard part. Sometimes the pain can be overriden while engaged in the repetitive activity, but then when you are done…oucheee! Wait, I may be talking about something else, but it still applies in both instances.
Luckily, I live to serve. And make money. Just remember the motto of the newly-created Madkevin TechnoMagickal Centre For Happyological Healing, Inc.: Does It Matter Where It Comes From If It Helps?
Clenched and painful to the point where you have to sit on it? Yikes, I didn’t have it that bad. A new wrist support is on the agenda, but despite my best efforts I simply can’t play CoH when I’ve switched hands. there’s just too much camera movement.
As I was out looking for a new wrist support I noticed the steelpad gaming glove sitting on a shelf in my local game store. Offering extra wrist support for mousing, or so it claimed, I figured I might as well give it a shot.
Feels good so far, but I’ll see how I feel about it at the end of the week.
