Day 1 Day 1 fingertip pain

[tomsee]

I am struggling with fingertip pain, mostly in my index fingers. It started as a result of typing too much on a hard macbook keyboard, apparently this is a common problem with these keyboards. I don't think it was purely psychosomatic to start I think it was legitametly a problem with the keyboard design, and I can type pretty hard.

I definitely feel some good level of acceptance long-term, but I have doubts short-term about this: my main concern is starting to type too much again and making my pain worse... because the pain came on strong while I was typing a lot on a very hard macbook keyboard, and many people had this same issue and moved away from the macbook keyboard to other keyboards that are "softer", and that fixed their issue!

Due to this I don't want to deny or be stupid here and make my issue worse...

I have stopped typing on my macbook keyboard like... maybe 1 month ago now. It really did help to stop typing, especially early on.

What makes me think this is getting into TMS territory is, the pain doesn't really go away anymore even if I stop typing completely... And it's only in my 2 index fingers.. IDK it's very odd..

I really fucking miss typing normally. I really enjoy typing. I'm an avid journaller, I like to comment online a lot, and my job is software. It just sucks a lot not being able to type like I used to. Even for simple internal reflection or doing like, excel stuff.

I'm hopeful.

The first step I'm doing today is starting typing normally again, on a softer keyboard (instead of avoiding typing with my index fingers by hovering them awkwardly). I also used dictation 90% of the time which I would love to be able to avoid doing... IDK. We'll see... Definitely still doubtful and typing right now on this keyboard, despite it being much softer than a macbook keyboard, is quite scary to me...

Thanks for reading.

 

[Ellen]

IDK it's very odd..

All of us who are TMSers have said this statement about our symptoms at some point. It's a sure sign they are TMS because they don't make sense.

 

[BloodMoon]

It started as a result of typing too much on a hard macbook keyboard, apparently this is a common problem with these keyboards. I don't think it was purely psychosomatic to start I think it was legitametly a problem with the keyboard design

It’s certainly possible that the keyboard and the amount of typing initially irritated the tissues. At the same time, an initial physical trigger doesn’t necessarily explain why symptoms persist or become so severe.

With mind-body/TMS, the nervous system can remain sensitised even after the original irritation has settled. Typing or using a particular keyboard may then become associated with danger, causing the brain to produce or amplify pain (and any protective muscle tension)—even though the activity is no longer causing ongoing damage of any kind. That though doesn’t mean the pain is imaginary; far from it.

If it were me I would ask myself whether there were any stresses, pressures or unresolved emotions around the time it began - they don’t have to be dramatic, it could even be just a feeling of irritation about something that you dismissed at the time as being 'nothing' because you felt you 'should' be okay with it (but you weren't actually okay with it). Finding none wouldn’t rule anything in or out though.

I had a somewhat similar experience. Many years ago, after a stressful - but trivial in the great scheme of life - disagreement with someone via email, I suddenly developed extremely severe pain and stiffness in my dominant hand while using a MacBook. I couldn't use my hand for normal every day tasks like brushing my teeth. It was very disabling and continued for many months and was eventually thought to be De Quervain’s tenosynovitis, with surgery discussed. Once surgery became a real possibility, the symptoms all of a sudden began to improve; they gradually disappeared, and I returned to typing on the same MacBook without the pain returning. (True De Quervain’s tenosynovitis can apparently get better on its own after a few months, but my De Quervain’s tenosynovitis-like symptoms had gone on for very much longer than that.) My interpretation is that my brain was terrified of the surgery and as such stopped creating the 'reason' for the surgery!