I struck out at the EMG test, which I guess was a good thing. The neurologist doesn't think it's carpal tunnel or a pinched nerve. He said he'd "think about it" and I should wear the wrist brace at night for three weeks and then come back and see if he came up with any new ideas. I don't think I'm going to pay to make that happen. I scheduled a PT appointment for this week, so we'll see how that goes. The neurologist also wrote me a prescription to try Topamax, but I haven't gotten it filled yet.
I've been having a good streak where I remember things that have given me trouble in the past, like TS and DZ, and remember to write them out in two strokes during realtime practice. I'm doing the same thing with words that are conflicts the "normal" way I would think to write them; nothing as simple as plague/playing, but that's the idea. I just have a general feeling that I shouldn't write it the easy way. I don't remember why right then, but it pays off. Before I would just kind of be stubborn about it and write it the easy way anyway, and then have to scramble to try to fix it.
I've had a small epiphany (can that be a thing?) about numbers, too, and I'm writing them one at a time more instead of garbling them. 12 is *really* difficult for me to write with my hand the way it is, and I realized I can just write it in two strokes, with much less chance of misstroking it.
I got Pyongyang right twice during practice today (without getting it wrong, to boot). I write it out a long way: PAOE/YONG/YANG. It's hard to start. It's almost like I want to bolt whenever I have to write it. But it's not so bad once I actually do it. I also fingerspelled a lot of names in practice today; some I knew right away weren't in there and fingerspelled the whole thing, like Lindy Boggs. Others I tried to do first (Pedro Vargas) and wound up fingerspelling them after they didn't come out right. I always do a thing where I think "I have -da defined, so I can just write Brunda, that'll come out fine."
My writing is really stilted with my hand being messed up, though. I wind up with a lot of dashes in the transcript that aren't preceeded by any mistakes. I just get lost and things start to feel wrong and I might hit one wrong letter and erase it, and then dash. At least I can pull it together and do it without dropping anything. Sometimes I don't catch the mistakes, though, and I wind up just hitting an S before writing SRAR, or hitting an N after writing something with N in it. I've got an average of 98.56% accuracy for my last five practice shows, though, so I'm keeping it together pretty well.
Words that end in -nal weren't coming out right, even though I don't think I've changed anything from theory (I just do NAL), so I re-wrote all 472 of those. I also wanted to start doing -tary with an asterisk to avoid any conflicts with tear, so I fixed 145 of those entries.
7.21.13
I did wind up calling the doctor about my arm, because it was really starting to be a problem. I got the runaround for a few days, and then they suggested I stop taking gabapentin and try Elavil. The first day I tried it was a disaster; the pain was so bad I went back to gabapentin right away. But after a week of that I was right back where I started before I took anything at all, and I decided to give the Elavil another shot.
Today was my fourth day taking it. Saturdays are usually my day off steno practice, so that could have something to do with it, but it finally felt a *little* bit better today during practice. I go in for the EMG test on Thursday, and find out the results the Monday after that, so I've got another week of painful practice at the least.
My accuracy was consistently above 98.5 for about five shows, but then the pain started getting worse. Friday it was at 97.5, and today was good but I had a drop that invalidated the results. I don't count shows with drops in my averages. There always seems to come a point during anything I'm writing where I get overwhelmed, and I feel like I can't do it, and I want to give up. I usually wind up dropping a sentence, or half a sentence, during that time, but I'm working to push through it and just keep going instead.
I'm still struggling to catch onto the benefit of fingerspelling instead of just blindly stroking things out. It elimates having to think about the words, it's faster, and it's more accurate, but it's hard to train myself to do. I did get "Laudenberg" out perfectly just stroking it out the other day, so that was cool. But it's the exception, not the rule. I also wrote "helicopters" has "helihopters" and TM tanslated that as "hell hospitallers," which I found amusing.
The longer I go without going through my theory book, the more muddled my theory becomes. I find myself just blindly stroking things and hoping they come out right instead of remembering what I'm actually supposed to be stroking. I realized three of the briefs on my practice list were so hard to write because I was writing them incorrectly.
Today was my fourth day taking it. Saturdays are usually my day off steno practice, so that could have something to do with it, but it finally felt a *little* bit better today during practice. I go in for the EMG test on Thursday, and find out the results the Monday after that, so I've got another week of painful practice at the least.
My accuracy was consistently above 98.5 for about five shows, but then the pain started getting worse. Friday it was at 97.5, and today was good but I had a drop that invalidated the results. I don't count shows with drops in my averages. There always seems to come a point during anything I'm writing where I get overwhelmed, and I feel like I can't do it, and I want to give up. I usually wind up dropping a sentence, or half a sentence, during that time, but I'm working to push through it and just keep going instead.
I'm still struggling to catch onto the benefit of fingerspelling instead of just blindly stroking things out. It elimates having to think about the words, it's faster, and it's more accurate, but it's hard to train myself to do. I did get "Laudenberg" out perfectly just stroking it out the other day, so that was cool. But it's the exception, not the rule. I also wrote "helicopters" has "helihopters" and TM tanslated that as "hell hospitallers," which I found amusing.
The longer I go without going through my theory book, the more muddled my theory becomes. I find myself just blindly stroking things and hoping they come out right instead of remembering what I'm actually supposed to be stroking. I realized three of the briefs on my practice list were so hard to write because I was writing them incorrectly.
I had NALGS for national, which should've just been NARBL (NASHL). Nation is NAGS or NAIGS, but that doesn't really translate to national. I was trying to smush RB (PRAOERBGS) into "appreciation," I guess because it has a similar sound to precious, gracious, etc. which I write as RBS. It's not necessary, though, and it's a lot easier to just write PRAOEGS than worry about what fingers are supposed to be where on that bank. And I was also doing deposit as SDPOZ because of words like disappoint, destroy, etc. which start with SD. It's not necessary at all, though. DPOZ works just fine. It's a good thing I review takes and make note of things that are hard to write; sometimes they're only hard because I've been trying to write them incorrectly.
I decided I should write all consonant + ize endings with an asterisk, which the AI couldn't figure out at all, so I went through and re-wrote all 720 entries that end in -ize, consonant + or not. I also decided there was no reason not to end words in -IT, so I updated 488 of those entries; and I made sure all 161 -ca entries work properly with C*A.
7.6.13
I have a real problem with joined words like northward and
checkpoint. My brain just can't process fast enough that they're
supposed to be two words. All I have to do is write "ward" with an
asterisk and it will join with "north" no problem, but I just don't even
think about it. And then I have weird things where I think maybe it
should be "safe-guard" and I write it that way. I know it's safeguard,
but in the moment of trying to keep up with so many things, that's just
what happens. Every time I make either mistake, I add the word to my
practice list, so hopefully that'll start having an impact soon.
I'm also starting to have a problem with AOE words that are spelled "ea" or "ae," like sear, fear, etc. My tendency is to write them as AE, and then about 90% of the time they come up as something totally wrong. I guess there are a few words that I have to write AE, and it's just all gotten muddled together, to where I write AE by default. I've been focusing on that though, and I think it's starting to get better.
I'm getting better at writing traffic segments. They used to be a nightmare! All those numbers of highways; 405, 520, I-5, you name it, it was a problem. But I'm settling down more and not trying to write every single thing the traffic guy says, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it.
I found out the hard way that koi wasn't in my dictionary. But now I have "fish-cicles" in there, just in case that ever comes up again. I wrote pivot as PIV/VOT, thinking it was perfectly natural, and it came out totally wrong. I think I only had it defined as PIVT. Don't worry about it, I thought, there can't be that many words that end in "vot," I'm sure it's fine. Then the very next day I wrote DIV/VOT and it didn't come out right. Just goes to show no matter how small the problem is, you can't ever ignore it. So I checked to see what other words I needed to fix..and that was it. Just divot and pivot, nothing else in there.
"-age" words weren't coming out right when I wrote them as -AJ, so I went through and re-wrote all 652 of them to make sure they'd work. I also had a problem with normal words like "automatic" not working right when I used my theory-standard prefix for "auto-," which is AUT, so I re-wrote all 120 of those, both as AUT and AUT/TO. Sometimes I'll write words like "waxy" as WAK/SI and sometimes I do WAX/SI, so I fixed all 32 of those to work both ways, too.
I'm also starting to have a problem with AOE words that are spelled "ea" or "ae," like sear, fear, etc. My tendency is to write them as AE, and then about 90% of the time they come up as something totally wrong. I guess there are a few words that I have to write AE, and it's just all gotten muddled together, to where I write AE by default. I've been focusing on that though, and I think it's starting to get better.
I'm getting better at writing traffic segments. They used to be a nightmare! All those numbers of highways; 405, 520, I-5, you name it, it was a problem. But I'm settling down more and not trying to write every single thing the traffic guy says, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it.
I found out the hard way that koi wasn't in my dictionary. But now I have "fish-cicles" in there, just in case that ever comes up again. I wrote pivot as PIV/VOT, thinking it was perfectly natural, and it came out totally wrong. I think I only had it defined as PIVT. Don't worry about it, I thought, there can't be that many words that end in "vot," I'm sure it's fine. Then the very next day I wrote DIV/VOT and it didn't come out right. Just goes to show no matter how small the problem is, you can't ever ignore it. So I checked to see what other words I needed to fix..and that was it. Just divot and pivot, nothing else in there.
"-age" words weren't coming out right when I wrote them as -AJ, so I went through and re-wrote all 652 of them to make sure they'd work. I also had a problem with normal words like "automatic" not working right when I used my theory-standard prefix for "auto-," which is AUT, so I re-wrote all 120 of those, both as AUT and AUT/TO. Sometimes I'll write words like "waxy" as WAK/SI and sometimes I do WAX/SI, so I fixed all 32 of those to work both ways, too.
Back in the Saddle
It was really weird coming back to steno after not doing it for two
weeks. I haven't taken a break that long..probably since I started, four
and a half years ago. I didn't hate it as much anymore. I felt grateful
to be able to even do it again. It's still really hard to get my
positioning right. I never really feel like my hands are in the right
spot. It's kind of like when you type on someone else's QWERTY keyboard.
Your fingers aren't quite sure where to go for a while. Except when I
do steno, I never seem to find my groove. So frustrating.
And yet my translation rate is still pretty solid. I've practiced to six news shows so far since I came back, and my average is 98.2%. It's not where I'd like it to be, but it's not bad. I seem to be doing really well at correcting my mistakes appropriately, for some reason. I think maybe I care a little less about it, so it doesn't freak me out so much when I make a mistake. I'm able to stay calm, keep listening to what's being said, and fix the mistake without losing content.
It's hard to get back into the groove of fingerspelling. It's hard enough not to just freeze up when I hear a name, or glaze over it like it wasn't even said. I have to force myself to even phonetically write what I heard. But that's not helpful; then a bunch of weird stuff just comes out. I need to focus on fingerspelling those words. I'm trying, but it's definitely a work in progress. I think there's about a 50/50 chance right now that I'll fingerspell it.
It's just so hard to write anything right now. It's like pulling teeth. I feel like my max speed is about 130 wpm. I'm still hitting 250 when I practice though, so there are moments when it's not so bad. Overall, I think it was good for me to take a break. I didn't like it; I felt like a slacker. But it's good to just let things set and jell, and be away from it for a while.
And yet my translation rate is still pretty solid. I've practiced to six news shows so far since I came back, and my average is 98.2%. It's not where I'd like it to be, but it's not bad. I seem to be doing really well at correcting my mistakes appropriately, for some reason. I think maybe I care a little less about it, so it doesn't freak me out so much when I make a mistake. I'm able to stay calm, keep listening to what's being said, and fix the mistake without losing content.
It's hard to get back into the groove of fingerspelling. It's hard enough not to just freeze up when I hear a name, or glaze over it like it wasn't even said. I have to force myself to even phonetically write what I heard. But that's not helpful; then a bunch of weird stuff just comes out. I need to focus on fingerspelling those words. I'm trying, but it's definitely a work in progress. I think there's about a 50/50 chance right now that I'll fingerspell it.
It's just so hard to write anything right now. It's like pulling teeth. I feel like my max speed is about 130 wpm. I'm still hitting 250 when I practice though, so there are moments when it's not so bad. Overall, I think it was good for me to take a break. I didn't like it; I felt like a slacker. But it's good to just let things set and jell, and be away from it for a while.
Chair Saga
I'm starting to use the Goodwill for the first time, really. For a
while I was sitting without using the back rest at all, and that's made
my back hurt, so I'm trying something different. Whenever I try to sit
with my back against the back of a chair, I can't seem to "reach" the
steno keyboard properly, even just putting the LS on my lap. But this
chair is pretty adjustable, so I tilted the back all the way forward. I
had to take the LS off the tripod, but I've written with it that way a
couple of times, and it seems to be working okay. I don't know if it's
making my back feel any better, and it definitely feels weird to write
that way, but at least I am resting my back on something.
I wanted to get a fancy ergonomic chair, something that would be really good. I thought about an Aeron chair, but I've seen a lot of people not liking those. They're also insanely expensive, and it might not fit, and if it breaks it's expensive to repair. I went to a showroom and tried out some Lifeform chairs. They're also anywhere from $1-3k. They were pretty comfy, but they didn't do anything to make my arm feel better, so I decided they weren't worth it.
I think it must've been an NCRA newsletter where I saw the Soma Court Reporter Chair listed; or maybe someone on depoman posted a link to the newsletter. Either way, I remembered it, and looked into it. I figured it would be the best chair, since I could use my tripod with it. After a couple weeks of thinking about it, I decided to get it. I called the two Soma dealers in my state, and after a couple more weeks of going back and forth with them, basically came to the conclusion that neither one of them could help me out.
So I called Soma directly, and talked to a really nice guy who got all the different components picked out for me. He said if I picked up the chair at one of the dealers, they could adjust it to fit me there, and I'd be able to swap out a backrest or something if it wasn't right. That sounded pretty awesome, so he emailed them. Two weeks went by and I didn't hear anything, so I called him back, and he called them, and they called me. They sent out a "proposal" for the chair, but it was missing the cutout. So I called the local place, and they said they'd check with the Soma guy.
A week later, I called the local place again. The representative said she emailed Soma twice, but they must be on vacation. Right. So I called Soma myself, and he said I don't need the court reporter cutout because I'm getting a split seat, and there's a space for the tripod. I went along with it and called the local place back, and officially placed my order. I think the standard wait time is about 5-6 weeks.
I'm a little concerned about the lack of a cutout, though. I wasn't sure the cutout was going to be deep enough to begin with, because I like my steno machine really close. Looking at pictures, it seems like the split is even more shallow. I don't know what the point of getting an $800 chair was if it's not even going to have the cutout. But hopefully all the adjustments, and the fact that it was under $1k, will make it worth it. It's got to be better than the two chairs I'm using right now.
I wanted to get a fancy ergonomic chair, something that would be really good. I thought about an Aeron chair, but I've seen a lot of people not liking those. They're also insanely expensive, and it might not fit, and if it breaks it's expensive to repair. I went to a showroom and tried out some Lifeform chairs. They're also anywhere from $1-3k. They were pretty comfy, but they didn't do anything to make my arm feel better, so I decided they weren't worth it.
I think it must've been an NCRA newsletter where I saw the Soma Court Reporter Chair listed; or maybe someone on depoman posted a link to the newsletter. Either way, I remembered it, and looked into it. I figured it would be the best chair, since I could use my tripod with it. After a couple weeks of thinking about it, I decided to get it. I called the two Soma dealers in my state, and after a couple more weeks of going back and forth with them, basically came to the conclusion that neither one of them could help me out.
So I called Soma directly, and talked to a really nice guy who got all the different components picked out for me. He said if I picked up the chair at one of the dealers, they could adjust it to fit me there, and I'd be able to swap out a backrest or something if it wasn't right. That sounded pretty awesome, so he emailed them. Two weeks went by and I didn't hear anything, so I called him back, and he called them, and they called me. They sent out a "proposal" for the chair, but it was missing the cutout. So I called the local place, and they said they'd check with the Soma guy.
A week later, I called the local place again. The representative said she emailed Soma twice, but they must be on vacation. Right. So I called Soma myself, and he said I don't need the court reporter cutout because I'm getting a split seat, and there's a space for the tripod. I went along with it and called the local place back, and officially placed my order. I think the standard wait time is about 5-6 weeks.
I'm a little concerned about the lack of a cutout, though. I wasn't sure the cutout was going to be deep enough to begin with, because I like my steno machine really close. Looking at pictures, it seems like the split is even more shallow. I don't know what the point of getting an $800 chair was if it's not even going to have the cutout. But hopefully all the adjustments, and the fact that it was under $1k, will make it worth it. It's got to be better than the two chairs I'm using right now.
Sidelined
I wound up going to my PCP to start figuring out what's going on with my arm. She charged me $30 and decided it was "stiff back muscles." She put me on 500mg of naproxen twice a day, and 10mg of flexeril at night. She said the numbess in my hand might be a bit of carpal tunnel, so I should wear a wrist brace (which cost another $70) while I slept. And she said I shouldn't do any typing or steno for two weeks. If it didn't feel better after all that, she said I should go to physical therapy.
My mom works for an epileptologist, and he thought it was probably a problem with the discs in my neck, which a lot of stenotypists have actually had problems with, according to depoman. That seemed more likely, but I wanted to try the cheap solution first, so I did what my PCP said for two weeks. My arm still hurt the whole time, and shockingly, at the end of the two weeks..nothing. No change. It still hurt just as much as it did at the beginning.
I was able to get an appointment with a neurologist for the first day after my two weeks was over. He basically said it could be anything - neck problems, carpal tunnel, thyroid, nerve problems. I told him what my PCP prescribed and he kind of laughed and didn't seem surprised it didn't work. He ordered some bloodwork and prescribed 300mg of gabapentin twice a day. That visit cost $70. I'm also going to have an EMG test at the end of the month, and I'll have to do a follow-up appointment after that. So much money! But it has to be done. I can't go on like this. And I know my writing is going to improve by leaps and bounds when my left arm and hand operate just as well as the right.
I can't really tell if the gabapentin is helping or not. Sometimes the pain is pretty intense; other times it's just a nuisance. I called the office yesterday because I was going to say it's not really working and ask what his next idea is (maybe just more gabapentin?), but the office was still closed from the holiday. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try again on Monday or not.
My mom works for an epileptologist, and he thought it was probably a problem with the discs in my neck, which a lot of stenotypists have actually had problems with, according to depoman. That seemed more likely, but I wanted to try the cheap solution first, so I did what my PCP said for two weeks. My arm still hurt the whole time, and shockingly, at the end of the two weeks..nothing. No change. It still hurt just as much as it did at the beginning.
I was able to get an appointment with a neurologist for the first day after my two weeks was over. He basically said it could be anything - neck problems, carpal tunnel, thyroid, nerve problems. I told him what my PCP prescribed and he kind of laughed and didn't seem surprised it didn't work. He ordered some bloodwork and prescribed 300mg of gabapentin twice a day. That visit cost $70. I'm also going to have an EMG test at the end of the month, and I'll have to do a follow-up appointment after that. So much money! But it has to be done. I can't go on like this. And I know my writing is going to improve by leaps and bounds when my left arm and hand operate just as well as the right.
I can't really tell if the gabapentin is helping or not. Sometimes the pain is pretty intense; other times it's just a nuisance. I called the office yesterday because I was going to say it's not really working and ask what his next idea is (maybe just more gabapentin?), but the office was still closed from the holiday. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try again on Monday or not.
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