Nothing quite like noticing an interesting thread half a week after it started. Note: I am not a physician. >>>>> "tw" == Timothy Wilson <wilson at visi.com> writes: tw> Hi everyone, Over the last week or so I've been experiencing some tw> very mild numbness and tingling in my left index finger. Also, it tw> occasionally twitches very slightly. Is this an early sign of RSI? Yup. It's not "carpal tunnel syndrome", however, since the nerve that controls your pinkie and (part of?) ring finger doesn't go through the carpal tunnel in your wrist. Those fingers are controlled by the ulnar nerve, aka the "funny bone" nerve. tw> Is it time to shell out 300 clams on that Kinesis keyboard? tw> (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/) Perhaps. I've noticed several other people who have mentioned that "ergo" keyboards are really expensive. 'Tis true, however ... ... I've been dealing with RSI for 5 years now. It started out as ulnar nerve problems: tingling progressing to numbness (!) in both pinkies, loss of grip strength. My Kinesis keyboard has helped deal with that problem. Are they expensive? Yup. Are they expensive compared to *not* being able to *work*? No way. Several other people here have mentioned that Keyboard X has helped solve their problems... ... but special keyboards aren't the only part of the solution. Several other people have mentioned setting up the entire work space correctly: monitor height, desk height, chair, etc. A funky keyboard won't help of those other things are dorked-up. YMMV, but I and several college buddies & colleagues who've had RSI problems have found that taking frequent breaks is very important. My wife almost always forgets to take breaks, and she regrets it at the end of a long work day mousing & typing. Many RSI problems seem to be related, to some degree, with circulation problems. Here's what I do, YMMV: 1. Take a lot of breaks, dammit! Set an egg timer. Use "xwrits", http://www.lcdf.org/xwrits/. Do whatever it takes to get your ass out of your chair on a regular basis. I'm recovering from tendinitis right now; I've had "xwrits" force me to take breaks every *20* minutes. When I'm healthy, it's every 55 minutes. 2. When you take a break, get up. Move around. Do not sit. You don't need to go jogging. The things I've found most useful to do are: a. Windmill my arms in both directions. The longer I take between doing this, the more my shoulders creak & pop when I do it. b. Shoulder shrugs, rotating in both directions. I'd do these as part of choir warmups, and they work well to help relax shoulder & upper back muscles at work, too. c. Refill my water/coffee/soda/whever beverage. d. Occasionally try to reach my toes to stretch my lower back. e. Take long lunch breaks, compensating by starting a bit earlier or working later. A single 8-9 hour work sprint is more likely to cause injury. 3. Know when to stop working for the day. This is *very* important. Most RSI injuries are injuries to "soft tissue": muscles, cartilage, tendons, nerves. Soft tissue injuries often take a long time to provoke 'cause they often can take a lot of abuse. But they get their revenge because they take much, much longer to heal: it's common to take 4-5 times longer to heal than it took to create the injury. So, if you're feeling tingling, numbness, or pain, you gotta stop. Right there. Now. If you continue to work, you're only going to make the injury worse. Keep that 4-5X healing time factor in mind if you're thinking of working through the pain: you're making a bargain with the devil.... 4. Anti-inflammatory drugs can help, for *limited* periods of time. Ibuprofen and sodium naproxin (spelling?), aka Advil and Alleve, can help lessen the symptoms. When taken on a regular basis, they can reduce the swelling that can make soft tissue injuries even worse. However, using these drugs is also a devil's bargain: they will dork-up your liver if you take them for long periods of time. Take the label seriously. Do *not* ignore the label, unless your doctor tells you otherwise. (Then, do **not** ignore your doctor.) Most soft tissue injuries have only one sure-fire treatment: don't use the affected tissues. At all. Nada. Nothing. Unfortunately, that isn't an option most of the time. I just started a new job. I couldn't take 3 weeks off to do nothing(*). Heck, I don't get 3 weeks of vacation per year. Instead, I've been doing *no* hobby hacking. I've been doing almost no personal email correspondence. I'm taking a huge number of breaks per day at work. I've been leaving work, quite early on some days, when my arms start to say, "You're done for the day". ... My tendinitis recovery is now in month #4. It sucks. Recovery is slow, waaaay to slow for impatient me. But it's *better* than the alternative. I've burned a lot of today's keystroke quota on this message, but I hope it helps. -Scott (*) Of course, my hobby is hacking code. Taking a vacation to do "nothing" means not hacking. That is damn difficult to do. "Nothing" also means not doing other things that can aggravate the soft tissue injury. Don't put a new rain gutter on the house: that weekend hurt. Don't recalk the bathtub: that evening hurt. Don't knead bread dough without a mixer: that evening hurt. Don't take a new surround sound amplifier out of its box: that evening hurt. ... When it comes to a bad RSI injury, doing "nothing" successfully is surprisingly difficult to do.