This is where I worked for two years.
My work troubles began with my move from an office to an area previously reserved for file storage. I needed a desk. Scavenging the furniture left behind from another move (read: the garbage), we discovered a 1960s Steelcase tanker. It was band-aid beige metal with a Formica writing surface and rounded edges. I loved the kitsch factor – these things sell on eBay for hundreds of dollars. My boss exclaimed This desk is totally YOU! It was a feat of industrial design, I had to admit.
My new/old typewriter-era desk was a bit tall, I learned, when I couldn’t find a chair that would adjust high enough or one that was narrow enough to allow me to tuck in without my knees or armrests hitting it. I had to hold my shoulders up to my ears to reach my keyboard, and this began to take a toll on my back and neck. No problem, I thought, I can fix this. I just needed the right equipment. Years of classroom teaching had conditioned me to spending money on supplies for my workspace.
After spending eighteen months contending with my body, my office furniture, and my workload, my physical therapist said you need to leave your job. So I did.
Since my shoulders and wrists were starting to hurt, I became obsessed with researching workstation ergonomics. I approached the problem like a true American: with shopping. Of course, started my shopping spree with a standing desk ($399). I bought a split keyboard ($89) and a new mouse ($185). Then I addressed the chair problem, becoming a real-life Goldilocks and the Three Chairs. The first was industrial-chic: lime green metal with a cool tractor seat ($52). It adjusted to fit my desk height, but it offered little back support and no cushioning. The second, a funky hydraulic German-designed “wobble stool,” ($200) also put me in the right position relative to my desk AND it kept my core active. It was also unstable and offered no back support, so I mostly just wobbled and hunched, slouching into an even worse posture. The third option, with the help of a U-shaped memory foam sciatica pillow, $29.95) was the closest I would get to “just right,” and even it was still too short by a good two inches. After getting dictation software ($182), I purchased a wireless headphone mic ($228).
I eventually accumulated a series of orthopedic diagnoses. The problem initially manifested as sciatica and neck pain, then made its way down my forearms (tendinitis) to my wrists (carpal tunnel) and hands (deQuarvain’s tenosynovitis) until my tender fingers became so inflamed that I could no longer type. My physical therapist discharged me, convinced that I had arthritis. On my absolute worst day, I cried at my desk and skulked home early, declaring myself “useless” because I could not type at all.
I got a scrip for six weeks of occupational therapy, where I played like a kindergartener with colorful toys and fluorescent putty and dipped my hands in warm paraffin and got what felt like disconcertingly intimate hand massages (YOU try talking to a person you’ve just met when you are face-to-face and she is massaging your hand across a table). I
accumulated a shoebox full of custom braces, thera-bands, tennis and lacrosse balls and squishy goo.The exercises to stop one problem exacerbated another, like we were playing a game of orthopedic wack-a-mole. My OT would call her colleagues over to ask Why isn’t she getting better? It’s her posture, they said. Try looking at her neck. An MRI confirmed damage to the discs in my C-spine and the beginnings of arthritis in my neck.
But did this also explain my hand pain?
When the steroid injection into my wrist didn’t work, I went to a hand surgeon, who told me it was never carpal tunnel, but rather, tendinitis. He said that I just needed to get stronger and recommended me for something called work hardening. By that point, I was too frustrated to even figure out what this would entail. I tried a different orthopedist who tried acupuncture and more physical and occupational therapy. He recommended an epidural in my neck. I definitely didn’t want that, so I found a new orthopedist who thinks it’s in my hand muscles and is sending me back to OT.
For the past year, my physical therapist said you need to leave your job. So I did. And here we are.
this gruntled worker 