Hi,
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. My message about De
Quervains disease-GIMP
connection was not meant to be a complaint about the GIMP or any other
software. I just
wanted to point out two things: 1) that we can definitely end up with
painful, inflamed
tendons after pressing the mouse for several hours non-interrupted,
regardless of the software
we are using and as harmless as a mouse might look and 2) that we
dont really know how
much is too much as for the pressure and time our wrists/hands can
resist until we actually get
the carpal tunnel syndrome or De Quervains disease. I dont play
computer games, but just like
the few previous times of intensive use of my mouse, I felt naturally
confident that the
numbness in my hand/wrist (after n hours of tension painting and
retouching with GIMP) should
disappear after stretching, relaxing and taking a reasonable rest.
Thats maybe true for one day
of work, but not for 5 days like my case, when I had to paint and
retouch a bunch of old
pictures in one week and GIMP was my first choice. De Quervains
disease is subtle and
somehow deceptive: you dont feel any pain nor any remote trace that
your tendons are
getting inflamed. In the morning of my last day of work, I woke up
with an uncomfortable
sensation in my wrist that I could not call a true pain, but I kept
going anyway and finished my
work. An increasing pain came afterwards, in the next days after using
the GIMP and would not
disappear even with relaxing exercises and long rest. I reached the
point of not being able to
move my right hand. Even so, I still believed the pain would go away
in the next days. I was
wrong, the pain increased and it took me 2 ½ months to make it
disappear. After the first
month, my doctor even suggested surgery. Fortunately, the
corticosteroid injection, powerful
medication and ice prevented me from investing at least $1500 more in
wrist surgery.
The conclusion : Beware of irresponsible use of the mouse. De
Quervains disease is definitely
deceptive and resembles a broken bone: it takes weeks/months to heal.
H. Noriega
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