Living with fibromyalgia

If you are reading this on a computer screen, chances are that you would have clicked your mouse at least a couple of times to navigate through this content. And in most cases, the finger used to click would be your index finger. Now imagine doing this repetitive movement every few minutes, day after day, year after year and you can easily infer that your fingers are at an increased risk of repetitive stress injury (or RSI) due to mouse overuse. The common name given to this painful condition is  Mouse Finger .  The 'Finger' in Mouse Finger usually leads a person to believe that the pain is restricted to the fingers alone.  However, from what I have surmised after reviewing anecdotal evidence and medical literature, it commonly presents as a cluster of symptoms in the finger, wrist and the forearm. Perhaps that explains why there are no easily available research studies pertaining to Mouse Finger alone. Most of the research studies consider these symptoms as a p...

In this Dragon NaturallySpeaking tutorial , I show how you can use scripting to automate your routine tasks and can significantly improve your productivity . For the purposes of the demo, I have used the task of adding a contact to your address book in Microsoft Outlook as an example. As in prior tutorials, I have used stop scrolling start scrolling down 2017 (a third party tool built on top of Dragon NaturallySpeaking) along with the Dragon naturally speaking premium version 13 on Windows 7 in the demo. The YouTube video is provided below. The main command that I use is KnowBrainer's " New Mouse Command ". This command records the position of the mouse for that particular application. So when I say " New Mouse Command Convert Sender to Contact ", KnowBrainer/Dragon Naturally Speaking will create a macro called " Convert Sender to Contact " where it will record the position of the mouse for the application Microsoft Outlook. When I...

As a patient with chronic pain , I have to try out different painkillers and antidepressants to manage my pain. Most of these medications, especially the antidepressants, have side effects that include increased dependence and, therefore, can cause withdrawal symptoms . Depending on the duration and the dosage of the medication, these symptoms can range from a mere inconvenience to brutal and long-lasting  health problems. I myself faced tremendous difficulty while trying to wean myself off an antidepressant called amitriptyline . Like many of its counterparts, amitryptiline also has drowsiness as one of its side effects. Consequently, insomnia as a result of withdrawal from amitriptyline was a major problem for me. From a high of 75 mg, I was able to reduce the dosage to 25 mg at the rate of 5- 10  mg every fortnight without much trouble. However,  reducing dosage from 25 mg onwards was a nightmare - no pun intended. I starte...

Shoulder Tendinitis is a common cause of shoulder pain. A more accurate term for it is Rotator Cuff Tendinitis . It means that one or more of tendons that make up the rotator cuff are inflamed. In my experience, even though this is not a serious injury, it is often debilitating and takes a long time to heal. I have had three recurring episodes of shoulder tendinitis in the last one year. I tried a variety of treatments but in the end, Kinesiology Tape  along with frequent icing proved to be the most effective approach. Article continues after the ad Here is an account of my experience. The initial symptoms I developed shoulder tendinitis for the first time in my life due to shoulder pull ups . I was doing the pull ups as a part of a physiotherapy regimen to help me become functional after multiple years of disabling neck pain. Since I was also suffering from chronic abdominal pain, I was unable to lift any weights. So in order to rebuild th...

It was messy, but it is finally done and over with! On December 22, 2017 the tax reform bill , or 'a giant tax cut ' as President Trump calls it, has finally been passed by both houses and has been signed into a law. It is not immediately obvious how the tax plan impacts patients with chronic illnesses. Views in the media are often tainted by the political prism through which the commentators tend to look at this issue. Plus there is limited discussion of the specific provisions that can affect patients with chronic illnesses. In this post, I am outlining some of the major provisions of the final bill that may affect chronically ill patients. Bear in mind that I am not a professional in accounting and taxation . However, I seem to have had more than my fair share of tax problems and as a result, I have become overfamiliar with the IRS website and publications. Article continues after the ad To make it easier to wrap our brains around this complex piece...

Are you looking for holiday gifts for your loved ones who are suffering with chronic pain? Or are you living with chronic pain and have no idea what to tell your friends and family when they ask you about your holiday wish list. Here is a list of gift ideas categorised into various groups that I have compiled based on my own experience and that of the patients that I interact with. Top 10 Gift Ideas Under $100 for Chronic Pain Patients iReliev TENS + EMS $79.95 Legoyo Far Infrared Heating Pad $ 99.99  Shiastu Neck Massager $44.99 Gel Seat Cushion Conformax Airmax $ 96.25 Tablet Stand Levo G2 $79.99 Sdadi Adjustable Table $ 59.99 Memory Foam Wedge Pillow Aeris $77.9 Miracle Back Pillow $77 Penguin Wireless Ergonomic Mouse $ 74.98 Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium$ 99.99 Time Saving Shopping Tip  : As you go through this article, keep on adding any of the items you like to your Amazon cart via the product links. Once you are done, have another pass...

In this Dragon NaturallySpeaking Tutorial , I show how to convert an email into contact in Microsoft Outlook. If you are in a hurry, you may want to skip to the YouTube video listed below directly and then return to this blog post for further clarifications. In my earlier blog post , I had shown a fairly tedious way to add contacts in Microsoft Outlook. The method includes bringing up the Add Contacts dialogue box and then manually entering the name and email. There is a faster way to do this if you received an email from the sender you want to add contacts. For this, Open the Email from the sender, do a Mouse Right Click on the name of the sender, then select the option of " Add to Contacts " in the drop-down menu Add Contacts dialogue box will be brought up which will automatically copy the sender's name and email address. You can add more data if needed. Click  "Save and Close" . In order to achieve the same functionality using Dragon N...

If you are frequently bedridden due to illnesses like chronic pain , chances are that you will tend to lose muscle mass. Less muscle strength can lead to increase pain thus causing a vicious cycle of chronic pain. It is important therefore to find a way to exercise and strengthen the muscle despite being bedridden . Over the years, I have found myself frequently to be in this situation due to fibromyalgia .  There are several videos about exercises for the bedridden patients(for example, this ). However, the exercises in these are more to improve mobility rather than increase muscle strength. Ultimately, I spent quite a bit of time compiling a list of exercises from YouTube that exercise and strengthen every major muscle group.  The list is provided below along with the major muscle groups that they exercise.As I have suffered from injuries because of using weights incorrectly, I recommend trying only with the resistance bands initially and that is what I have includ...

In this Dragon NaturallySpeaking tutorial, I demonstrate how to use speech recognition with the Blogger platform to write your blog posts faster. Dragon Naturally Speaking  can be used to improve your productivity in any text intensive tasks such as writing or blogging . In the YouTube video below, I show how to write your blog posts faster with Google Blogger. You can utilise  most of the commands shown in the video for your WordPress blog also. For maximum efficiency, you may want to go through the video initially, and then return to this post and review the summary of the commands used in the video to compose the blog post. Article continues after the ad Bear in mind that I do not cover each and every functionality available in the Blogger platform. Even demonstrating the most common options took about 21 minutes, which is twice the average time of my video tutorials. However, with a bit of practice, you should be able to start using the other features easily ...