advice?

flick56
flick56 Member Posts: 6
Hi I joined the forum recently and am tempted now to start my posts saying I "only" have OA in my thumb and hand as evryone seems to be suffering greatly and a lot of you with RA it seems. All this is new to me so forgive my ignorance. I can assure you however, that I am in a great deal of pain, and not moaning unnecessarily. I seem to have good days and bad days, perhaps this is normal? The good days mean that I am not in pain all the time but those certain movements are equally painful whatever the type of day. I work in an office and operate a keyboard. All day. Every day. I worry that I may not be able to do that forever. I have been offered an assessment of my work station (checking my chair, height of monitor etc but that does not really seem to be what I need with the OA in my hand. I feel I need to take control because if I dont then I know my depression will kick in. I am very scared for my working future because I had such a bad experience when on long term sick with depression. I had downright unhelpful people in HR (you could even say nasty) and as for the ATOS interview, well I can hardly bear toi think about it. When they said I was totally fit to work I could have slit my wrists on thre spot. I think if it had not been for a great GP and counsellor and a magica woman at some part of the mental health team that deals with people getting into/back to work , I would not be here today. I dont think I would be stong enough to go through that again.

Comments

  • dreamdaisy
    dreamdaisy Member Posts: 31,520
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    Advice? All I can suggest is that you ask your GP to refer you to the occupational therapy team at your hospital to see if there is anything they can suggest in the way of a thumb support. Thumbs are very useful to us and it is tough when they go wrong. I have a different kind of arthritis in my hands (and I admit that every now and again it's not easy) but I've made adjustments over time, as we all do. Good luck, I hope something can be done. DD
    Have you got the despatches? No, I always walk like this. Eddie Braben
  • mellman01
    mellman01 Member Posts: 5,306
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    Be mindful that taking pain med's as they can reduce your serotonin levels so it might be a good idea to have a word with your GP about it if your not taking anything right now, I only found out after I'd been put on Prozac.
    As for work try and take it at a step/day at a time if you can trying to figure it all out in one go will just add to the stress levels, well if your like me it will!, as for pain from OA or RA each one of us is different so pain is a personal thing there's no way of comparing it to those of others , some things will be similar but not many, for example with OA you'll find it comes and goes this can be as it pleases so its hard to judge but then again doing certain things can kick it off but if your is like mine it can fool you by refusing to show itself sometimes but mostly if I push it it lets me know but that said I've been caught out some times, somedays you get away with it somedays you don't its a strange beast I'll give it that.
    I found trying to prejudge it can do your head in somedays, you'll find certain ways of coping with it as you go along, again like pain its different for others you have to make your own coping strategy I.E pacing yourself at work etc, bottom line is you'll need to do it on the hoof as it were.
    As for using a PC there's other types of keyboards out there so it might be a good idea asking those on here what they think about them.
  • lizzieuk1
    lizzieuk1 Member Posts: 302
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    Hi flick,
    Just a thought could you ask for voice activation software for the computer work? That way you need only use you hands to type when absolutely necessary.