Repetitive Strain Injuries

Dicene

This is a very typing intensive game, obviously, and many of you have professions that require significant amounts of time on a keyboard and mouse. Have any of you dealt with these sorts of issues before(I think @Juran mentioned his basher was designed in a way to help lessen the mechanical strain involved), and if so, what did you find helped alleviate those problems?

I ask because I've started experiencing pain in the back of my right hand recently. It's never been particularly bad before, but yesterday it got so bad at work that I switched to using my mouse with my left hand, and I am absolutely not a lefty. I'm going to take the obvious step of having a PCP check it out and I'm starting the process on Monday to get my job to provide me with hardware that is designed to be less straining(since they won't let me bring any sort of equipment in for security reasons), but I was sort of hoping to learn more from the experiences of the Imperian playerbase(and maybe admin).

Iniar

twiddler

Anette

Well @Dicene, it's not RSI I have, I have serious and significant nerve damage in my right hand because I was an idiot when I was younger, but perhaps what I do will help ya.  Bending it in certain ways hurts like someone stabbing my forearm with a knife.  So obviously, I try to avoid doing that.

I have three ways I get around this:

1] I have my system automate repetitive tasks it can be trusted with, like deffing up and doing forging.  (Though I need to fix my forging bit come to think of it)

2] My common things like "lay all my rites" "queue healing cause omfg ow" "attack enemy" and so forth are bound from F2-F7.  I don't bother with keys beyond that in the F-keys because they're long to reach for my left hand.

3] I have a series of two-and-three letter aliases for many things in my client that I can type easily in a bind.  For instance crb for combo slash lacerate (L is kind of far away so I rationalized 'crb' as short for 'combo raze bleed' to remember it and have something easier)

If you pay attention to how FAR your hand has to go from its resting position to go whereever you have it going to type different things, you can come up with much more efficient aliases, I think.  I find it helps a ton.  Before I got that stuff squared away I could play for maybe an hour before  my right hand/arm started hurting a fair lot.  Now since I'm predominantly using my "good" hand and in fairly efficient ways, I can play kind of indefinitely.

Worth keeping in mind each mobility impairment is different so this might not be applicable to you, but hopefully it helps.

Juran

I have dodged repetitive motion injuries through a combination of good luck, preventative awareness, and regular stretching. My mother developed Raynaud's as a result of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and it cost her a career, so I have been acutely aware of the symptoms.

Khizan

Take your hands off the keyboard every once and a while and stretch. My rule of thumb is two 5 minute breaks per hour or so. Get up, walk around, stretch a bit. Better for your hands and your back.