Let’s be honest, it’s not the kind of scar that’s going to impress women

It’s been two weeks since my carpal tunnel decompression, everything’s healing nicely and if it weren’t for the fact my left hand’s gone completely pain crazy – it’s been doing the work of two hands for a fortnight and has developed the same symptoms as my right, with added pain just to make things interesting – I’d be quite chirpy. The operation was quick and perfectly pleasant, the scar’s going to be a tiny thing, and while I can’t exactly go around punching nuns I can type, peel potatoes, hold a pint glass, drive cars… the important things, really.

I need to keep my computer use light for a bit longer, so I doubt I’ll be blogging for a bit yet, but I wanted to say thanks for the reading recommendations and for the good wishes. They were very much appreciated.

PS I’ve filed this under “cuttings”. I’m hilarious, me.

I’m getting carpal tunnel surgery on Wednesday

So I’ll be quiet for a while, unless something annoys me so much I start typing with my face. I should probably buy some books and stock up on Monster Munch.

You know you spend too much time on social networks when…

…you catch a spectacularly minging throat infection and catch yourself thinking “I should post a pic of this!”

Light at the end of the carpal tunnel

I had a meeting with a hand specialist yesterday, and I’m feeling much more cheery as a result: I do indeed have carpal tunnel syndrome but it’s not something I need to worry too much about.

I’m going to have a minor operation, probably in August, and I won’t need to take much more than a week off work. The cure rate – that is, people who have the op and never have to worry about CTS in that hand ever again – is about 87%, and while there’s some muscle damage in my right hand it doesn’t appear to be particularly serious. The symptoms in my left hand may be early signs of carpal tunnel too, but for now they’re not severe.

So that’s nice.

Breastfeeding and making new mums feel like crap

I’ve written before about the way new mums are talked down to by health “professionals” – last week on Radio Scotland the NHS Breastfeeding Co-Ordinator spent an entire programme patronising women who dared suggest that breastfeeding isn’t always possible – and other parents, but Zoe Williams expresses it wonderfully in today’s Guardian:

the case for breastfeeding is not that strong, and it has passed so seamlessly into the book of What’s Best for Baby that it’s often very lazily put. To give an example, there’s a charity called Best Beginnings, which aims to foster breastfeeding confidence, and is endorsed by the Department of Health, the Health Protection Agency, the NHS . . . the full force of nationalised health provision. Its opening statement is, “Did you know babies who aren’t breastfed are five times more likely to end up in hospital with serious tummy bugs? Or that in countries like Australia or Norway, people think breastfeeding is as normal as putting the kettle on?”

Here’s the thing: that figure in the first statement is from the World Health Organisation, which presents it as a global collation of statistics. In other words, this is not comparing two babies from Surbiton. It’s comparing breastfed babies to formula-fed babies from countries where they might not even have an assured water supply or sterilising equipment or electricity, where they might not even have enough formula. It’s an absurd way to propagandise for breastfeeding. If they were flogging a Pot Noodle, they wouldn’t get away with it.

…the statistics showing less asthma, less eczema, less obesity, fewer ear infections: these haven’t been adjusted for social class and environment. It boils down to: “Middle-class babies do better; middle-class babies tend to be breastfed.”

Mums and mums-to-be have a tough enough time without this bullshit.

In my sleep I grind my teeth

UK indie-rock fans of a certain age will be have Therapy?’s “Teethgrinder” in their heads right now, but this isn’t an indie-rock thing. It’s a weird health thing.

I appreciate this is a long shot, but does anybody have any idea why I might be tensing up like crazy whenever I go to sleep? I keep waking up and my arms are pushing with all their might against the mattress or, if I’m on my back, my hands are trying to push themselves through my ribs and into my chest cavity. It certainly isn’t deliberate, I’ve no idea why I do it, and I’m pretty sure it’s  ruining my sleep and exascerbating the carpal tunnel syndrome-a-like symptoms I’m getting in my hands.

More to the point, does anybody know how I can stop it?

I have fat knuckles and numb fingers

I mentioned a while back that I’ve been getting the symptoms of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: sporadic numbness in my hands, and a feeling that can only be described as “fat knuckles”. My hands feel big and bloated and slow. It’s not very pleasant.

I don’t know if it *is* CTS, but the doctor thinks it might be. As does the physiotherapist I was referred to.

My physio suspected it’s gym-related rather than PC-related and instituted a lifting-weights ban, and he also told me to wear wrist splints in bed so I don’t bend my wrists in my sleep. Neither appears to have made any difference. I’ve massively reduced the amount of time I spend on the PC (hence sporadic blogging) and using the iPhone, I’ve seriously cut down my Xbox use and so on, but the symptoms persist. They’re at their worst whenever I have to make a pinching shape, such as when I’m holding a book or magazine.

Incidentally, I think stopping smoking may have caused it – or at least, the weight I’ve put on since stopping smoking. I’ve seen a few studies suggesting that being overweight significantly increases the likelihood of CTS, and while I’m hardly obese I managed to gain an extra two stones of weight in six months. That was going down again until the weight-lifting ban. I swear to God, everything’s gone to shit since I binned the cigs.

Anyway. My understanding of CTS is that the next step is probably surgery, but I’m hearing wildly varying accounts of whether such surgery works even for a short time. As you can probably imagine, I’m not keen on getting stabbed if it’s not going to fix the problem – and even then, only as a last resort.

At the risk of inviting snake oil salesmen to flood the blog, do any of you have experience of, or know anybody who’s had experience of, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? I’d appreciate any tips.

Hey! Let’s talk about US healthcare reform!

Don’t worry, I’m not going to start blogging about politics. But I thought this (via Andrew Sullivan) was an interesting way of looking at things. David Frum writes:

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

Direct access to physiotherapy is a pain

As I’ve mentioned, my hands have gone to hell over the last few weeks and my doctor reckons it’s carpal tunnel syndrome – so I’ve been referred to physiotherapy (although as far as I can see, physiotherapy is completely useless in cases of CTS. But I digress). I don’t know what the system’s like in other parts of the country, but round here we have direct access to physio: if we want an appointment we just phone the physios directly. Excellent!

In theory, anyway.

I called last week, only to discover that you can’t call in the afternoons. I called the next day, and got an answering machine. The leaflet tells you that you’ll get an answering machine and that you should leave a message, but this particular answering machine won’t let you leave a message because the staff are too busy. Instead, it suggests you call back the next day – which I do, and this time I get a different answering machine. This time I can leave a message, and somebody will phone me back within two working days.

That was three working days ago.

This access to physio may be all kinds of things, but “direct” it ain’t.

Ear mutations, why it hurts when I Wii, a completely unbiased review of the new Eels album, and a quick thing about iPhone 3G coverage

Hello there. Sorry for the lack of blogging recently, I’ve been taking a break from the computer. Here are a few things that have been occupying me lately.

First up, headphones and mutating ears. I’ve been reviewing some high-end headphones – in-ear ones – and while I can’t put any details up here until the reviews hit print, I can say that once you start spending £80-plus on headphones you end up with something pretty amazing. Such phones deliver so much bass that even the nicest, prettiest acoustic number feels like somebody driving an 18-wheel truck into the side of your head.

My existing headphones weren’t quite as dramatic as that, but they were pretty good – until recently, when they stopped delivering any bass at all. The problem is the seal. With in-ear headphones, once you get a good seal you get bass; if the seal isn’t perfect, you don’t get bass at all. If you ever see user reviews of £150 headphones where an outraged punter accuses the cans of being a bass-free zone, you can be sure the problem was that either the phones didn’t fit properly or the punter didn’t put them in properly.

The problem with my ones, however, is a bit different. I can’t get a seal any more. I’m not putting them in any differently, there’s no damage to the headphone covers. They just don’t fit any more, and because I’ve thrown out all the other spare covers, there’s not much I can do about it. I think the problem may be that I’ve been using earplugs quite a lot recently – our neighbours have a new dog, which can be noisy, and I often need to nap during the day – and the earplugs have widened my ear canals slightly. Not hugely – I’m not able to put, say, a large carrot into my lugs – but enough that the headphones that did fit, don’t. Very annoying.

Next up, the Wii. If you played Dead Space on Xbox, you’ll love Dead Space Extraction on the Wii – especially if you can get it for £15, as I did in ASDA. Unfortunately while it’s a brilliant game and superb fun, it’s absolutely hellish to play if you’re using the Wiimote. I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome the other week, and playing with the Wiimote makes the symptoms appear pretty much instantly. I don’t know if things are any better if you use the Wii Zapper, the gun-shaped holder for the Wiimote, but it’s probably not a good idea for me to try.

On to phones. If you’re getting crappy 3G coverage from your current provider you might find that switching makes a huge difference. According to their online coverage maps both O2 and Orange deliver great 3G coverage to my bit of the world, but in reality I can’t get an O2 signal in much of my house, anywhere near the gym or in either pub I frequent. I switched to Orange this week and I get full-strength signals everywhere.

It’s worth thinking about if you’re switching and taking a number with you: to do that you need to hand over a code called a PAC code, which your new provider uses to transfer the number. If I were moving from Orange to O2 I’d be bloody furious at the coverage in my neck of the woods, but having transferred the number over there would be a lot of hassle if I wanted to go “your coverage is crap! Shove your contract!”. The moral? Make sure the coverage is good enough and *then* hand over the PAC code.

The new Eels album, End Times, is very good. If you like music made by people with beards, you should buy it.

Last but not least, I had a complete mental blackout today on the radio and couldn’t remember which key press gets a right-click on a Mac when you don’t have a two button mouse. The correct answer is, of course, the Windows key.

A-ha-ha-ha.