Health update pt.4 (final) & back to drawing! (Patreon)
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Hi guys!
Good news, I'm working again! \o/
Let me rewind to the 28th when I went to visit the physiotherapist. He felt my hand, putting pressure on a bunch of points to see if they hurt, and there was no particular pain, and I hadn't suffered from numbness, so he concluded it's been healing well with the recent medication and that the rest of the way won't need physiotherapy, and can be managed with proper handling. Here's a bullet pointed list of things we discussed:
- He said that shaking your hands side to side and up down were good for relaxing the muscles and improve circulation, with shaking up down being particularly effective.
- He said to try dunking the hands in warm water with salt for a bit, then switch to cold water, and that helps with circulation too. Seems like circulation is a big deal, especially now with the cold weather.
- He said that the stretches I was doing were good (these ones I saw on the Harvard site: https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/exercises-for-pain-free-hands ), but showed me a way to do it better. Seems that doing these often is a good habit, as it will help stretch the muscles and relieve stress.
- He said that using an ergonomic mouse is good. I did buy a vertical mouse, but for now I think I'll just keep using my left hand for mouse use.
- He said that the diet changes I've been making are good and to keep at it. (Loading up on protein, vitamin C, etc.)
- I told him I do my hourly breaks during work and he said those are good too, and it's good to do the exercises during that time.
- And lastly, he recommended elbow cushioning. An arm wrest pillow, or even just a towel, is apparently really good for this. Coincidentally, I had made an arm wrest pillow a few days before. :p
And now I'm slowly getting back to work/streaming. It's a bummer it took so long to heal, but at the very least I learned some good health practices to carry me into the future, and I improved my diet a lot, which is great.
For now I'm doing 1.5-2h sessions with breaks every 30min, and as the hand keeps improving I'll keep increasing my work time, and hopefully it'll be back to the normal pace soon. Hop by the stream sometime. :3
In other news, I created some master posts today for new $5+ and $10+ patrons to catch up on old content. I hope they're handy!
Also, I've made progress on a new article I'm writing. This one is talking about the pros and cons of vector lineart in Clip Studio. It should be interesting. Stay tuned for it! ;p
Thank you again for your support. ❤