TL;DR - No streams this week due to surgery.
For any of you that have followed me for a while, I've talked about my ongoing issue with carpal tunnel syndrome. I'm finally getting it addressed this week via a surgical procedure known as carpal tunnel release. The surgery is super early Thursday morning, which means I won't be able to stream Wednesday night, and obviously not Thursday as that will be post-op. I'll need to ensure I rest immediately after, and be super careful in the coming weeks.
If you're wondering what "carpal tunnel release" is, I'll do my best explaining the problem and the solution. If you don't want the details, skip this paragraph. Around your wrist there are two things I'll refer to as "rubber bands" that wrap around the muscles, veins and of course, nerves. Carpal tunnel syndrome is essentially where these bands are putting pressure on everything in such a way where several things are caused - numbness and tingling (think "pins and needles" like if you sleep on your arm wrong, or if you fold your legs under you and sit like that for too long), varying levels of pain (to me it feels like a mixture of getting electrocuted and someone jamming a hot knife into my wrist) and potentially loss of strength. Thankfully I don't have the third one as far as I am aware, but because of the first 2 I can't do much with my right hand at the moment without lots of pain. Anyway, the solution to this is to release the pressure by cutting the lower "rubber band" completely, and partially on the upper one. It involves an incision at the bottom of the palm for access.
Full recovery time is about 6 weeks, with the first 2 of those having my hand wrapped in bandages that don't come off. I'm imagining that this is going to make typing and mouse use... interesting. The rest of that time I'm limited in activity, such as not being able to lift/push/pull more than 3 pounds/~1.3kg with that hand.
All of this means that for the few days after this I'll need to extensively rest my hand, and to play it safe I'm going to avoid typing and general computer use completely for a few days. I'll be able to use my phone, but in an extremely limited capacity. Therefore I've decided that for the most part I'm going to disconnect completely and just rest. This means I might see messages and whatnot here or on Discord or IRC, but I probably won't be able to fully respond to them if I do. I'll pick up next week and we will go from there.
The last thing I want to mention is to take care of your hands. We're programmers, and that means we use the mouse and keyboard a LOT. For decades I just used whatever crappy hardware I had laying around, and it was seemingly fine, but it did wind up catching up to me. It's not the only thing that can cause this of course, but it can make it worse. I now used a split ergonomic mechanical keyboard that requires far less pressure to type and can be angled in a way where I don't have to bend my wrist at an awkward angle. I have both a trackball and a vertical mouse and alternate between the two depending on how my wrist feels and what I am doing. Is this hardware cheap? Absolutely not, and I get that. But it absolutely is worth the investment in the health of my hands. It's allowed me to put this off for a couple years, and that speaks volumes as to what a difference this can make. It's worth saving up for, for the sake of your hands. Another small note is to learn to type with proper form. I ignored this for decades, only finally doing it about 7 years ago or so. It makes a difference.
I also want to extend a very large thank you to all of you out there for the kind words and well wishes. I really do appreciate it so much. Y'all are the best. ❤️