Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I am not qualified to make any medical judgments, this blog post is only speaking from personal experience. If you feel pain, see your doctor. If you find nothing but dead-ends then perhaps this article can help you.

Excruciating Hand Pain

I’m writing this article because for just over a year I had dealt with terrible hand pain that had completely disabled me and utterly changed my career. I’m a web designer and developer so my hands are quite necessary to perform my job.

In February 2009 I took on a huge project that required a ton of programming. It was during this project that I cooked my hands. I tried to continue typing for the next month but after the pain continued to worsen I finally made the decision that I had to stop. I chose to finish out the project by hiring 8 or 9 typists that could help me do my job over the period of the next few months. As you can imagine, my efficiency dropped considerably and the emotional pain took a huge toll on my life. I am continually thankful for some dear friends of mine at my Church community group that helped me finish that project and save my career. In particular my good friend Casey, who was my first typist (and amazing), was huge in helping me open up to the idea of someone typing for me.

The point: my hands were fried. I couldn’t get much of anything done on my own and I had started to wonder if a career change was inevitable. I was in a rough spot.

The only thing I knew for sure is that I could lean on my faith knowing that Jesus Christ was sovereign over my circumstances. Beyond any remedy, he has been my rock as he has used this pain in my life to call me to greater dependence on him.

My Background

I’ve been a pretty hardcore programmer for just under 10 years. From the beginning I’ve always struggled with being a work-alcoholic. Computer programming was a natural passion that would often leave me in front of my computer for 10+ hours a day. I remember taking study hall my senior year in high school just so I could have an hour more of sleep. It wasn’t rare for me to pull overnighters and then head to school dazed and confused.

During high school I was part of a small venture that provided an online application for the quick service industry. I loved working on that application. We had over 100 people using the website each month and we we’re in six different states. It naturally became an addiction as I had high hopes that the company would become profitable and provide a living for me. It was during these formative years that I established my work ethic and my often exhaustive, burnout habits. One of my doctors called these periods “programming marathons.” He would say this, look at me disappointingly, and claim that years of doing these while not exercising had caused my excruciating hand pain.

The Full-time Career

A few years after that flagship venture I started my official career at the Cobalt Group in Seattle and I began working full-time. After only 2 months of working there I started to experience terrible lower back pain that plagued me for the next 2 years. It was hard working through the pain and I found that I wasn’t my old self. I was still quick and efficient but I couldn’t do the long hours that I used to, it was too painful. I went to a chiropractor during this whole period with little relief from the pain. Usually I would leave an ice pack on my lower back for most of the day- just to get the minimum in for my employer.

Self-Employment

I left Cobalt in September of 2008 to start Jordan Crown. It was exciting to be on my own again and have more control over my work environment. I also noticed that my back pain started to drift away. I was very encouraged as this allowed me to run full force. I was able to help a startup company called TrueLobby develop their website and brand and was working 12 hour days to finish the project. My hands would hurt a bit, but I could deal with it. It would soon get worse. Not with my hands but with my lower extremities.

It was shortly after this first project that I started to have chronic leg pain. I had multiple diagnoses: sciatica, meralgia paresthetica, bursitis, piriformis syndrome and IT band syndrome. I started physical therapy bewildered as to how this could happen. I was a runner (though in remission) and I kept fairly active. Was the chair killing me? I hated having to be so mindful of my body- I have now come to believe that being ‘so mindful’ was part of the problem. I believed that I was fragile. I would tell people that I was a pixie stick, that I couldn’t handle much; that I was getting old.

More Pain

Over the next year and a half I would be plagued with pain all over my body. Here were some of my ailments:

I wish I were exaggerating but every single one of these ailments actually happened. Not only that, but in their own seasons, each one caused me considerable problems. I started to hate computers. I blamed them for causing all of this pain. I was convinced that computers were inherently bad for people; I became an ergonomics freak. This view was hard to hold at times as I knew friends that were older than me (I was only 23!) who were still typing 10+ hours per day. Something was off…

My biggest struggle was my hand pain. The others were big too because they restricted me from working for more than an hour at a time, but without hands I couldn’t do anything.

After feeling frustrated that I had to depend so much on others for my job, I bit the bullet and bought Dragon Naturally Speaking. I was amazed at how accurate the application was at turning speech into text. I set out on a mission to create a programming-by-voice platform built on top of vocola. This proved to be no small task and to this day the platform has many flaws (I don’t work on it anymore obviously).

I became a voice-to-text enthusiast. My community group at church grew glazed over as I would constantly inform them each week at group about my recent developments. Casey, once again, was helpful in informing me that I talked about it way too much. But that’s what life is like for an RSI sufferer- you can’t help but be defined by your pain. Anything that makes your job easier is gold.

Intuition- My Worst Enemy

So what do you do when you hurt? For goodness’ sake, stop doing what makes you hurt! I did experience minor relief by halting activity- but I also couldn’t do anything! Everything hurt. Essentially the only position that didn’t hurt was lying down. There’s nothing like hitting the pillow at night knowing that on your accomplishments list was creating a bigger rift in the couch. I would lay down and then lay down some more. I now believe that my body started adapting to my newfound lifestyle, and that my muscles were getting weak. My condition only worsened.

Stopping the activity that made me hurt made logical sense, but in the end, it provided no benefit. No matter how long I rested, the pain would come back full force.

Was I Really Broken?

In late April 2010 I made a huge breakthrough. I searched for RSI cure or something similar on Google and found a gal with a similar story named Rachel. She referred to a book called The Mindbody Prescription by Dr. John Sarno. The basic premise is that we have years of pain and rage stored in our sub-conscience. Our brain sees that rage and those uncomfortable thoughts as dangerous so it tries to suppress them. In turn our brain decides that it’s better for us to be distracted by physical pain instead of thinking about the dangerous internal pain and rage. In his book, Dr. Sarno theorizes that the way the brain does this is by restricting blood flow to certain body parts. This creates mild oxygen deprivation and in turn, causes pain. Though I strongly disagree with Dr. Sarno’s view on Macro Evolution, I do have my theories that God has created the brain to operate this way.

But does the brain really do this? Really?! I was skeptical, but I was also losing any hope for a productive life. I had hired a friend to work for me but I wasn’t sure how long I could keep this up. Sometimes I even had my friend slice cheese for me because it was too painful.

After more reading on Rachel’s site and sites that she linked to, I was ready to make the jump. For the first time in 9 months I was going to put away the microphone and take out the keyboard. I bought into the idea that Dr. Sarno’s theory could be right, after all, the book had 120 5 star reviews (a huge majority). Normally even a few keystrokes could put me back a week. What would happen?

It worked! Not perfectly, but within a few days I had seen a ~35% reduction of pain in my hands. I was keying again for an hour or so a day. The pain didn’t diminish completely but it also didn’t get worse. I was floored. Over the next month my leg pain also improved (I also found that ramming a tennis ball into my glutes also has huge value). My neck pain, which had become a huge issue began to vanish. My heels, which had already started to restrict my activity, also began to improve. It was huge the day that I threw my running shoes on and hit the pavement (they say that’s bad for you), I just decided that I was going to start living again. I knew that the pain I was feeling was real but that it wasn’t based on real physical issues. Every single area where I’ve had pain has improved considerably, and on some days, has even disappeared.

What was I so Angry About?

Reckoning with the idea that I had all of this internal rage inside was kind of weird. After all, I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty nice person, flaws and all. In fact I aspire to be someone that loves the people that God has put in my life. I don’t do this perfectly by any means. Dr. Sarno talks about all of these pressures from society to be a “good” person. He talked about how many of his patients were perfectionists. I could definitely identify with this.

As I began to think about the pain episodes over the last few years I began to notice that when the pain started I was also going through huge personal trials. For instance, I never made the connection between a breakup I had with my hand pain. I had met a wonderful gal and fallen pretty bad for her. I loved her family and the bright future that we might have together. It seemed like I had met the woman I was searching for.

During the last month of our relationship the emotional distance between us began to grow. I decided to attribute it to school and talked with her about letting go for a while. We broke up that night. Over the next few months I learned how much she meant to me. I struggled through many nights wondering what happened and hoping against hope that she might still have feelings for me. Over a series of miscommunication and error on my part our lives inevitably grew apart. It was only a month or so ago that I made the connection between that season and the birth of my excruciating hand pain.

I was able to trace back quite a few of my symptoms with personal hardships and I have found this to be an invaluable tool for healing and restoration. I have also looked down the corridor of my life and have acknowledged pain and resentment from my childhood, this too has been wonderfully helpful.

Life After RSI

I have been applying Dr. Sarno’s principals for just under two months. I had a relapse a week or two ago but I started reading the book again and the pain got better almost immediately. Here’s how life looks like now:

That second to last bullet was a bit of a risk but Dr. Sarno recommended it and I thought, hey, I might as well. It’s been nice to continue to improve while the bills drop off.

Every week I continue to get better. I only get worse when I get super busy and don’t give attention to sub-conscious rage or read the book. But I feel like that’s even a gradation. I haven’t read it much in the last few days and I’ve felt fine. In fact I’ve typed this entire post with the keyboard and I have very little pain, if any. The only symptoms I have today are cold hands and minor leg pain. Neither keep me from doing my job or steal my focus, and they’re both improving. I used to think about my pain ~400 times a day (no joke). Now I mostly just think about how weird it is to be pain-free.

I decided to write this article because I have met quite a few people with similar struggles as me. It’s not just hand pain, but most chronic pain. Dr. Sarno’s book is not only for RSI hand sufferers. There’s stuff in there for anyone with pain. The book has changed my life and the way that I look at health care. I have come to the conclusion that I am not made of paper mache and that my body is strong and resilient. Today I have been typing almost non-stop for 10.5 hours. I’m going home shortly but not because my hands are cooked, but because I want to.

I hope this post will help someone. Perhaps you know someone with a story like mine

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