Laura Arjona Reina

My hands hurt :(

Laura Arjona Reina at

My hands hurt :(

The left one, because of the keyboard, I think (metacarpus and wrist). The right one, because of the keyboard and the mouse (the pain is little bit different, metacarpus and middle finger area).

I'll go to the doctor, but I'm quite sure I'll be told to stay away from keyboard as much as I can, and maybe do some sport or movements to strenghten my arms. I'm not sure if I'll have the needed discipline (I can rest from work some days, but not weeks as needed, I suppose. And at home, you pump.io friends are too awesome, and I have some pending stuff to write).

I just read that changing to Dvorak keyboard may help. But I'm so accostumed to QWERTY... and I type well on that since I was a child (my mother, secretary and touch typing teacher, taught me well).

Do you have any experience about changing the keyboard QWERTY > Dvorak (if you touch typed well (all the fingers and so) and quick in QWERTY?

Show all 11 replies
It would probably help a lot to change how you position your hands.

If your keyboard is higher than your hands, your wrist bends and the carpel tunnel is strained.  If you raise your seat and/or lower your keyboard it will help help a lot.  

I have a folded triple wrist rest that I rest my mouse wrist on to make sure it is higher than the mouse.  

The idea is to be set up so your wrist and hand can be comfortably straight -- as they are when your arms are relaxed at your side when standing.    

laurelrusswurm at 2014-02-23T02:31:28Z

I think if you can at this time it might be good to take a little vakay and let them heal on their own. If you can't though, you might find a pair of these helpful in easing the pain.

aether at 2014-02-24T16:46:45Z

Thank you everybody for caring and your answers. I took good note of all of them.

The doctor sent me to take some X-ray photos, we'll see how it's going. No treatment (well, analgesics) until then.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to stay away from keyboard (and mobile phone) as much as I can, and when I'm typing, I take breaks many times. That's helping, I think. At job now I have some tests to do (basically, figure out how to get rid of our XP computers, wether migrating some to Win7 and some to GNU/Linux), so not much typing there either :)

Laura Arjona Reina at 2014-02-25T20:22:33Z

For me switching to those “split” keyboards really helped (also from German QWERTZ /to/ QWERTY ;)).
AND moving the mouse to my left hand b/c for some strange reason I press the mouse onto the table with my right hand. A little difficult at first but my WM of choice is awesome and I use vimperator in Firefox so I won't touch the mouse most of the time anyway.

etalas at 2014-03-13T07:28:52Z