FYI: carpal tunnel for dualstow

[Benko]

1.  You can get rid of carpal tunnel by the appropriate "soft tissue work".  Active Release Technique (ART)  is one such technique.  You can find a practitioner near you here:

http://www.activerelease.com/providerSearch.asp

Graston is another such soft tissue technique.  I have less experience with Graston but it would probably work as well (the chiropractor I use knows both).

2. There are alternative mice e.g. vertical ones and although I never had carpal tunnel I did use the roller mouse for many years

is http://split.contour-design.com/

which may be of help.  The roller mouse has a bunch of buttons, one  for single click, one for double click, one for right click, etc and a really neat way of scrolling that will even allow you to scroll across multiple screens.

3. Prevention is better than having to fix things after they break and in addition to the obvious ergonomics, I have my chiropractor check out my wrists/forearms once a year since I work at a desk and use a mice all day.

[WiseOne]

Sorry to hear about your CTS, dualstow.  It's quite the occupational hazard for us!

Giving it a rest to the degree that you can is helpful.  Definitely don't overlook the conservative measures of wearing wrist splint at night and trying a steroid pulse to calm down the inflammation.

There is a mouse pad (Apple has one) that some people I know who developed CTS have switched to, and they say it helped.

I guess you're going to try a speech to text program?  Dragon is pretty decent, I know a lot of people who use it.

[MediumTex]

I have used the mouse below for many years and I can't believe anyone still uses a regular mouse.

Hand and wrist fatigue begins to set in for me with a regular mouse after 6-8 hours, but with the trackball device I never have any discomfort, no matter how long I use it.

[Mountaineer]

I have used the mouse below for many years and I can't believe anyone still uses a regular mouse.

Hand and wrist fatigue begins to set in for me with a regular mouse after 6-8 hours, but with the trackball device I never have any discomfort, no matter how long I use it.

That mouse looks like an alien! 

... Mountaineer

[dualstow]

Much appreciated guys! (Generic plural that does include ladies).
I'll be more prolific when my keyboard replacement ships.

Edit: Funnily enough, someone else recommended that same Kim Jong-un style mouse and I have it here somewhere! I'll miss my hardwood mouse but will give the trackball a try, as well as dusting off my old wireless trackpad.

[MachineGhost]

This was for fine hand and muscle pain not CTS, but I gave two different vertical mice a try but they just caused fatigue and pain in a different location.

The final solution was to buy the best mouse designed for large hands and not use the claw-grip (arched hands/fingers) to move it, as well as changing how I gripped the deadlift, changing my grip to less fine on the rechargeable toothbrush and switching to a lightweight rechargeable shaver (and not use it every day).

CTS can sometimes be a symptom of Vitamin B deficiency.