ART IS PAIN: Dealing with repetitive motion injuries

As a full-time artist (and with plenty of friends who are also hard-working art professionals), I know we artists have a tendency to work like a machine in a 24/7 factory. As much as that helps our income and makes our customers happy, the important thing for us to remember is that we aren’t machines. And even machines break and need downtime for maintenance.

Plus, the more we do the same kind of work with our hands (and uncomfortable positions or with improper tools), the more likely it is for us to encounter repetitive motion injuries. These can be painful and keep you from doing what you love.

Hopefully after reading this, you’ll feel inspired to improve your work habits and workspace so that you limit your chances of a painful injury to your money-makers (I mean your hands, of course!)

NOTE: I’m not a doctor. Many of the info you find here can be found after a chat with the doctor and a google search. So this is my semi-informative, semi-anecdotal advice post about tendinitis from the desk of a very impatient, workaholic, creative professional!

About tendons, tendinitis, and Carpal Tunnel

In short, tendons attach muscle to bone and tendinitis is the inflammation of tendons that are overused. The goal of recovery is not to use those muscle groups when the attached tendons are inflamed.

What Tendinitis feels/looks like:

• Tension, tingling, and pain in the forearm, wrist, and hand
• Limited range of motion and weakness
• Throbbing and swelling
• Crunching or “twanging” sensation in the troubled area

For me as an artist (and even when I played more Playstation growing up), I was diagnosed with one of the common types of tendinitis called “De Quervain’s stenosing tenosynovitis”. But because I was too stubborn to actually rest, that developed into tendinitis of the wrist and a hint of tennis elbow.

Tendinitis can develop into Carpal tunnel. Carpal tunnel syndrome is numbness, tingling pain, and weakness in the thumb, index and middle fingers as a result of irritation of the median nerve being irritated at the wrist. Tendinitis is typically caused by overuse while Carpal Tunnel can be from pressure compressing the nerve, congenital issues, glandular disorders, etc.

Read more here:
https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/arthritis-tendinitis
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tendinitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20378243
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/175596.php

How to recover:

Great. So, you went and broke yourself but you don’t have time for that! You have so many commissions to do! What do you do now?

First off: don’t worry about the future. If you’re feeling what I’ve mentioned above, it is likely a common and treatable injury. If you are patient with yourself, you can recover. You need to focus on getting help, communicating with your customers, and getting rest. Otherwise, this could go from bad to worse.

Visit and Obey your Doctor

Before I got to my doctor, I was at the point where my arms were in extreme pain for days. Thankfully my doctor is amazing. Not only did she single-handedly help me with my chronic sinus infections, she had a great wealth of information on tendinitis.

The run down was: rest, wrist braces, ice packs, and anti-inflammatory gel. She hooked me up with a prescription for a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) gel called “Diclofenac Sodium” which is commonly prescribed to people who suffer from arthritis (and even used in veterinary science on horses with injuries!) When administered in the prescribed amount topically to my wrist (on the skin of the wrist where the angry tendons reside), it helped alleviate pain and heal.

The trick to getting better with the prescribed tools is to actually use the prescribed tools (“Thanks captain obvious!”) Seriously though. I put off using the gel at the start of my recovery since it smelled kind of bad. Since it was the winter time, ice was not really what I want to snuggle up to. And I was just too lazy to use the wrist braces; they can be uncomfortable if you’re not used to them or bind them too tightly. I was foolish to think I could just rest and recover. By the time I was so frustrated and emotional from being forced to do nothing for a few weeks, I started to use the gel, wrist braces, and ice packs and it made a huge difference. It didn’t just calm the pain, it helped to reduce inflammation repair the tendons.

Rest (or ELSE!)

The worst thing for you right now is to do pretty much anything with the muscle groups associated with the problematic tendons. If you have tendinitis in your hands from sewing, cutting, drawing, etc. and you push yourself too much, it can lead to tennis elbow and eventually it could result in a tendon snapping = surgery = $$$$ + even more recovery time.

Lay your hands flat while you rest if hand-clenching (tool-holding) hurts you. The muscles and tendons on the underside of your hand and wrist that work to close your hands into a fist are in need of rest.

No, seriously. REST!

With proper rest, meds, healthy diet, and improved ergonomics, it’s taken about a month or so to get to a point where was 98% better. I went from not being able to hold a toothbrush without severe pain to full function with rare numbness/pain. Full tendinitis recovery could take someone 3-6 months depending on the case so don’t try to rush into anything that could put you on an operating table!

Don’t forget to ask for help

If you live with other people that care about you, try not to be a stubborn overachiever like me. In the beginning of my tendinitis, picking up an empty plate hurt so badly but I put dishes away despite the pain. This was unwise when I had a husband more than willing and able to assist. It’s not something to be ashamed of. These injuries are common and resting properly is tough for anyone (especially when we rely on our artwork for creative outlet, entertainment, and income.)

Communicate with customers

Assuming you already have a good relationship with your commissioners from clear, consistent communication, they should understand that injuries happen and to give you time to recover. If they push you to keep working, they may break you for good… then NO ONE gets their commission. Ever.

If your customers are being unreasonable, patiently remind them that you’re a human being that needs to recover or else you will lose full function of your hands. Good things come to those who wait.

It can be difficult to keep every customer in the loop especially when typing isn’t the best idea as you recover. If possible, post to an alert channel so you aren’t forced to advertise or communicate with each customer – if you have one reliable place for information (a commission queue, Telegram channel, website, Twitter, or gallery page) post a statement there so that it is the first thing they read when they log in to check what’s up with their commission.

If you want to be really pro-active, take into consideration that recovery could take 3 to 6 months. If you are in a position to offer refunds, that can help alleviate stress for both parties involved. If that isn’t an option, regular updates will have to do to keep your customers from assuming the worst.

Anti-inflammatory diet

This was admittedly “bonus point round” I made up for myself (not prescribed by a doctor) but I wanted to help improve my chances of recovering and do it a little faster, so I tried to cut out things that cause inflammation. If you want to do the same, that means cutting out refined carbohydrates (bread), fried foods, sugary-drinks like soda, red meat, and some other delicious goodies that you may ingest daily.

Optimal anti-inflammatory foods include: olive oil, fresh fruits, fatty fish, nuts, and green leafy vegetables. I actually started to feel a little better as a whole once I adjusted my diet to consist mostly of anti-inflammatory foods but your results may vary!

Read more about an anti-inflammatory diet here: 
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/foods-that-fight-inflammation

Exercise

3 to 6 months is a long time to be moping around, watching TV, and trying not to hurt yourself more. Get your blood flowing with exercise that doesn’t involve your hands so that you can get some endorphins (to keep from getting depressed about your downtime) and so that your body can work on repairing the issue. Take a walk. Ride a bike. Dance your butt off. Just be sure to let those angry wrists rest!

Prevention Tactics:

Hopefully there isn’t a “next time” but if your full-time dream job brought this upon you and you expect to keep doing your art for profit for the foreseeable future, bank on this happening again. What you can do is try to limit the chances of it happening or reduce the intensity of the pain and recovery time through pacing yourself and using equipment, furniture, and tools that will help to ergonomically improve your workspace.

Stretch & Keep using the gear

All of the ergonomic goodies I mention are listed at
my materials, tools, and suppliers blog post.

I apparently needed this tendinitis scare to show me the foolishness of my inclination to use whatever furniture was free or cheap or “I’ve had it for this long and it’s been fine.” I’ve improved the ergonomics of my work space considerably since my injury. I am here to tell you not to wait it out like I did. Stop using awful tools just because you’re trying to cut corners on costs! Spending some money on a pair of scissors that cut properly, a desk that’s the correct height to work at, and a proper desk lamp so you aren’t hunched over is a drop in the bucket compared to surgery costs and lost income from recovery time.

The straw that broke the camel’s back (or in this case, the pen that broke the artist’s wrists?) was an Apple Pencil. Round, smooth, easy to lose your grip unless you death-grip it like I did. Or just get ergonomic grips for the Apple pencil and your traditional art pencils so you can save your tendons!

The iPad art marathon with the Apple Pencil definitely put me in a bad place… however that wasn’t the lion’s share of my tendon aggravation. Overuse makes sense because I’m a commission machine. I work long hours and every day of the week. As summer 2017 turned into fall, I was feeling more pain and numbness from all the aggressive artwork I’ve done with few breaks if any. I am known primarily for my traditional artwork. If you would have looked at my desk set up in 2017 you wouldn’t have guessed that at all. I was working from a $40 used child’s drafting-table-style desk. As a professional artist, I owed it to myself and my customers to improve my situation.

The old desk I used for my computer area was more like a writing desk; not designed for a digital artist’s life. I often felt my wrists resting on the edge of the desk and my elbow crammed against the arm of the chair. So I got new desks (computer area and general flat workspace), a drafting table, a lumbar support chair with movable arm rests, foot rests for both desks (to help curb another issue: I would curl my legs under the seat of my chair, thus hurting my knees), and a new desk lamp for the drafting table. And one of the best new investments was a desktop easel to prop up my WACOM tablet! It helps artistically and ergonomically.

All of these ergonomic goodies are listed at
my materials, tools, and suppliers blog post.

If you found this post informative, feel free to share on social media!
Otherwise, if you have experience or suggestions to share, I would appreciate your comments below!

Much LORF!
Crazdude

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