Arm updates

[Fragmaster01]

You can do it! Be of good cheer! *cheerleader section*

The cheerleaders are not very coordinated, and in fact appear to be constantly transforming and arguing amongst themselves over who their guest artist should be. As you do.

[Donnie]

* Donnie readies chisel and hammer

Such pain.... where does it come from and where does it go? Such silly things, I'll fix it all! Huahurhurhurhur.

I don't suppose a dose of painkiller helps with your everyday business?

[Virmir]

GAH

I was taking anti-inflammatories for a few months but I stopped since they don't seem to be doing any good.

[Zeo Fawx]

I'm glad to hear there is some degree of improvement. If there was no nothing, or getting worse then I'd really be worried.

[yarrick]

Hey Vir, found something which might help. You can get a device called a "Tens unit" which helps with pain from things like tendonitis. When my brother was on the high school rowing team, he had a lot of pain from tendonitis. He used a Tens unit and says that it really made an improvement. The units are fairly cheap and you can find them on ebay.

[Virmir]

I considered trying one of those, however they treat the pain and not the actual problem itself.  So I'm afraid that if it does reduce the pain, I might get overconfident and end up injuring myself further because I'm not feeling as much pain which tells me to stop.

I am glad to hear that it does work, though!  This is an item I may consider in the future if I need to move to Plan D, that is I decide one or both arms definitely are not getting better and it's time to gauge how much I can do with what I have (which is a possibility with the right arm, however that decision is at the very least a few more months off).

Thanks for the recommendation!

I'll post my monthly update soon.

[Virmir]

Might still be too early to say because there are definite ups and downs, however I think both arms have done slightly better in March compared to February.  I'm starting to very slowly increase the amount of exercises done with the right arm, for example actually moving the fingers a little without complications.

I'm going to continue with my current routine throughout April except I'm going to try allowing myself a second 1 hour-ish drawing session with the left hand only every week.  So that would bring the total drawing allotment up to about 2 hours per week (plus 5 minute scribble sessions at the end of my strict every other day exercise sessions).  Will check in in a month to report how it goes!

[PrincessHotcakes]

I don't have the issue with the fused bones, but from what you've described I sooooort of hold my pens wrong the same >.>;

[Virmir]

That's only a measure I've been trying with my right hand since using the middle finger for anything at all irritates it.  Pretty sure the way I hold pens normally is standard.

[AvzinElkein]

So no commissions until the arms have been fully healed, correct?

[Virmir]

That's correct.  Priority one is going to be getting CF back up and running, then after building a large buffer and everything is good I will probably do some request topics, and if everything is still good from there will finally reopen commissions.

[Virmir]

I've been recording how each arm feels on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being perfect, 1 an acceptable level of mild soreness, 3 and above concerning, 10 being shark attack) since the end of January (which was pretty dumb since I should have been doing this the whole time) and thus after taking the averages I now have a rough idea of monthly progress.

Note that this isn't an accurate measure of how the right arm compares to the left since the right arm is nearly constantly at rest and left arm constantly in use (unless I'm very careful it is still very easy to set the right arm off).

Code: [Select]

L R
February 3.1 4.1
March 2.4 3.2
April 2.2 2.9
So April was a slightly better month than March (actually the difference between February and March was a bit better than I originally thought).

(Although if you want to get technical, these should be rounded to the whole number since I only have one significant digit in my data...  But this looks better!)

For May I'm going to tentatively add another 30 minute or so drawing session for each hand, bringing the weekly total up to 3 hours.  We'll see how it goes!

July 1 is my six month checkpoint.  If I continue to see improvement these next two months I will continue taking it easy.  However if I don't see improvement, then enough is enough and I'm going to start getting back in the game pain or not.

[Nixuelle]

In order to see if this month-to-month improvement is statistically significant, we're going to need to see the standard deviation values associated with each of those averages...! ;)

[Virmir]

Some standard deviations then, since excel has a standard deviation formula!

Code: [Select]

L R
February 1.4 1.8
March 0.9 1.3
April 0.9 1.0

[Rune]

I think it's a little funny your plan of attack is to suddenly return if there's no improvement? I kinda get what you're saying, but risking serious injury still seems like a less than ideal plan any way I look at it. Though I'd be lying if I didn't anticipate you coming back so much... |D

I just hope your arm continues to improve.