Anonymous asked: How do you balance your tendinitis and your writing? My tendinitis disturbs a lot when I'm very inspired and I begin to write, but the pain is excruciating.

When it was really acute, I didn’t balance anything. That’s actually why I got into Castle. I spent about a month sitting in my dorm room, not using my arms, and I watched the entire show.

At this point (a year and three months later), my tendinitis is mostly gone, and writing rarely exacerbates it. My problems are more with mousing, so I work at desk with a properly position keyboard tray, and use wrist wrests for my hands. However, if I’m not doing much mousing or editing, and am just writing, I rarely have problems.

I have more issues with my upper arms and elbows than I do in my hands, and so that creates more problems playing percussion for 6 hours a day, than it does for writing. 

However, my advice would be to take breaks (10 minutes writing, 5 minute break), take aleve (major-league helpful) and try to relax. ALSO, make sure you’re typing so that your hands are about level with your belly button, and your arms are relaxed, your shoulders down, and you have the least amount of tension in your neck as is possible. Any tension above your elbows will make the pain below them worse. 

Try not to sleep with your arms curled up, too, because you can over-stretch/tighten tendons in your sleep. I had to sleep in a brace for a few months to train my wrists to stay straight. 

Icing for about 20 minutes a day really helped me too, even if I didn’t have a lot of pain. I also avoid carrying things in a way that will exacerbate my arm pain. So get someone to help with the heavy lifting, don’t carry three grocery bags on one arm, etc.

I found that the more I took care of things in my normal routine, the less pain I had while writing, because, if it’s done write, it’s a low level stress on the hands, as long as you’re relaxed. To that end though, anything in large amounts can cause problems with tension-related injuries, so taking breaks and moderating your work time is important.

Also, switching from typing to hand writing was helpful for me, because they use different muscles, somewhat.

I have a list of stuff that goes on and on, so I hope this stuff is helpful. I know exactly what you mean by excruciating, and I’m so sorry that you have tendinitis, Anon.