Mouse Not Required?

Chromose asks: "Being a system administrator by day, and coder/artist/gamer by night, my hands and wrists get their fair share of exercise around the clock. I've had lumps on the back of my hands off and on for a couple years now and just recently discovered they are ganglion cysts. And although pain and stress has been minimum up to now, I worry of what continuing everyday keyboard and mouse stress will lead to. Introducing FingerWorks. I stumbled across their iGesture Pad on ThinkGeek the other day and started digging for reviews. What reviews I have found exclaim how remarkable the products work, but not many reviews could be found. It sounds like the answer to my search for relief, and it sounds too good to be true. So I'm asking, who out there has used these things and are they truly a revolution in the making?" Yes, ThinkGeek is part of the Sinister VA Software Kieretsu, but if you aren't worried about it, then neither am I.

Comments

Ganglion cysts are basically harmless

[eht]

As the page you posted says, without actually saying it, ganglion cysts are basically harmless, and unless cause you problems can be ignored, I've had them for several years and they come and go without any problems, one doctor I mentioned them to said I could get surgery, but they wouldn't be guaranteed not to come back, and the traditional method of removal used to be smashing them with the family bible.

Re:Ganglion cysts are basically harmless

[cei]

Yeah, I've had ganglion cysts for most of my life. Had one surgically removed when I was in 4th grade. 6 or 7 years later it was back and they drained it with a needle. At this point I've decided they don't bother me enough for me to pursue any further treatment. They might ache a bit in cold weather, and when I was playing bass regularly, my wrists could stiffen up a bit more, but it was bearable.

You have two hands: use them.

[jotaeleemeese]

After many years in the IT industry as an SA I began to have pain in my right hand.

I immediatly took some actions (new keyboard, comfortable mouse pads, etc).

Something else I did was to change the mouse to my left hand and declare it in my work machines as a left handed one.

At home I bought the most comfortable input device I could find (I settled for a Waccom pen tablet using the pen 99 per cent of the time) and carried on using it with the right hand.

All those changes eliminated the pain, I have been working like that for 2 years.

The workload in your hands is heavy, help them by distributing the work as much as poosible between both of them and ensuring that your hand does a little in a repetitive manner as possible (next year I may switch hands, devices or both to ensure the new changes don't become a new source of stress).