Success Stories

Doctor and Spouse - My Experience with a Grade 3 RSI sufferer

By Dr. Sanvidha Shetty

"All the pain is in your head: you feel it in your brain."

Well, this is how most of our mornings would begin by me telling my husband this before I became aware of RSI. As a medical student and most often than not I could boast that I had sound knowledge about any subject under medicine, but this misconception was cleared when my husband asked me " Have you heard about RSI? " I shrugged it off by saying, I have not come across it in my entire medicine curriculum, and it is not important. Next day at work, I asked my colleagues and some orthopaedic doctors about it and they were as ignorant.

The importance of RSI dawned on me when my husband started to suffer from it. He initially started to complain of pain around his right shoulder blade, which would get worse with every day he worked on the computer and at that time when he turned to me for help I said "all of us have aches and pain, just pop a pill you will be fine". But things were far from "fine" , as a matter of fact, things started getting worse. We went to the best of orthopedic surgeons, who misdiagnosed the shoulder pain as spondylitis and advised some physiotherapy which probably made things worse. He was overdosed with pain killers and muscle relaxants which made him lethargic and really tired. I remember at that time we had gone for a wedding and he was so affected by the pain killers that he was feeling dizzy and had to be immediately rushed out of the wedding. Now patience was also running out so we got him admitted under the best orthopaedic surgeon. Investigations and the MRI showed nothing, doctors said it would slowly go or he would have to suffer from it all his life. My father who is a doctor himself said my husband needs a screwdriver for his head and all his pain will go away. My father-in-law added that he needed an appointment with the psychiatrist. But I could see the drastic changes in my husband, a person who never got bogged down by anything: not even my nagging.

He would often ask me "why me?" since he was a person who went regularly to the gym, did vigorous swimming and people who would not make any effort to exercise had no pain. I had no reply. I would look at him suffering in pain and cry which of course did not help anything. His muscle mass was getting leaner and he was loosing strength. Simple activities like passing a dish at the dining table, driving, getting in and out of the car was painful and done with a lot of planning. My husband who lived life to the fullest had turned into this lone sufferer, always dejected, sad, and in constant pain. I had turned into this impatient, snappy, frustrated wife who could not help him.

Our ray of hope came when we met Dr. Deepak Sharan. He seemed to be the only one who knew about RSI. A diagnosis of Grade 3 RSI (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) was made. Being a doctor he taught me how to release the trigger points and it was such a simple solution to the ordeal we went through for almost 3 months. I spent relentless hours between hot packs, ice packs, releasing his triggers points and reading up all the books that were written on this topic. Slowly I started to see the smile on my husband's face return firstly because he now had his family believe he was not psychic. The treatment was working miracles on him he bounced back quickly from stage 3 of RSI to a person who could do most of his chores pain free. With the right modifications at his workplace personally suggested by the doctor during a visit to his workstation, he could even continue working which he enjoys.

There are some days when the pain does come back but he does not get depressed or worked up about it, because he knows the solution to his problem is back at home, a few trigger point releases and the right stretches will put him right back into action.

Any serious illness can unleash a tempest of emotional reactions and RSI is no exception. Psychological reactions can result from the injury. Because they have been injured, people get frustrated and angry. During the period when my husband was suffering from pain we had a lot of arguments and emotional turmoil. I thought he cared only about his pain which according to me was not visible and would always remain depressed even at times when I was happy over certain events. But I realised that my behavior did not help the situation because what makes RSI particularly difficult to deal with is that your emotional state can affect symptoms. Keeping your emotions steady when you're in pain is difficult to do for an RSI patient. Try and understand that.

My message to all the spouses and family members of RSI patients is that it is not easy to see your loved one suffer and that there will be times when you can get frustrated and you may feel angry or feel that life is just getting worse!! But get out of that feeling because your spouse or son or daughter suffering from RSI needs your help. Even if it is not financial or physical help, just be there for them. Lend them a shoulder to cry on, understand that they too want to get better and live a good life and you can help them do that. If we could see into each other's souls and understand the pain perhaps we would be all a lot kinder and show more consideration. But internal pain does not show so we do not believe them. Just because there is no open wound does not mean you can't have pain.

With most of the white collared workers with high incomes adopting the western culture, RSI is a reality and here to stay. My message to all the present doctors and the doctors of the future is that RSI is turning into an epidemic and we have to be aware of this so that the next RSI patient coming to us need not go through the torture of incorrect treatment and medication because of our ignorance.