Success Stories

My experiences with RSI

By Rajesh

I think my first bouts of RSI started around 4 and half years into my career. I am an engineer in a software company. During the first three years of my career, I was leading a bachelor life and as is usual with an Indian Software engineer fresh out of college, the only other place to hang out was at office. I roughly spent around 12 hours on an average at office and on days when the deadlines were tight, ended up working for 16 hours a day to even 18 hours a day. There were no health problems during this time of my career but I feel that I sowed the seeds of RSI then. Later, over the years although I did relax there were always days when work pressure made me stay at office for 15 hours. I completed around 8 years of career as of today.

Around 2 years back, I started having pain in my neck, which would start in the afternoon. By the night this would be converted to a strange headache. On those days I would be woken up at around 3 or 4 AM because of severe headache. I discovered my own medicine. It was a tablet of Crocin and reclining on an easy chair rather than sleeping on the bed. I visited an orthopaedic near my house. He treated me for spondylysis, took some X-Rays and gave some medicines but they were of no use. The frequency of the headaches became more. Initially two years back it was once in 2 months, later it came to once in 1 month and later almost twice a week. The pain was sure to haunt on days when the work pressure was high.

By chance I heard the interview of Dr Deepak Sharan on Radiocity. I sent him an email. He responded with his consultancy timings and hospitals he visits. I again got involved in work and did not pay attention for my health (and email) until I also started finding that my hands were getting weaker. I could not handle change (coins) and would drop them often. Then I took and appointment and went to the doctor. 5 myotherapy sessions of trigger point therapy with some exercises and hot water and ice pack massage on the arms and the neck proved to be more effective than what they seemed. The 5 physiotherapy sessions were administered by Jerrish Jose.

For those of my colleagues who complain of such difficulties, I advice that it is still not too late and moreover instead of suffering they can just visit the doctor and get cured. My observations are when a person is affected with a small ailment like fever but which causes enough discomfort then he consults the doctor but in case of ailments like the RSI, the person either never finds time or is always postponing the visit to cure himself. The reasons being the pain is more of an off-on kind of disturbance and the patient just suffers with the pain, as it is not too serious. Also he is not brought up in an environment, which acknowledges that RSI is an ailment and needs medical attention.

Rajesh (r_raj_esh@hotmail.com)