So I skipped a month, which is actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I have the typical reason - super slammed with work. I haven't made much progress on the pain front. The touchpad didn't help with my right hand pain/numbness at all, but I had an ergonomic specialist come check out my steup, and she suggested "mousing" (weird word, but it makes sense once you get used to it) with my left hand. I actually had both a wired and wireless mouse (and the touchpad) hooked up to my computer when she was here, and she said, "does that mouse work?", referring to the wired one.
So I put the wired one on the left, and kept using the wireless on the right. At first I thought I would need to switch the function of the buttons (right and left click), and I was really disappointed when I couldn't figure out how to set the functions for each mouse individually - if I changed one, it changed both - but now I'm pretty used to just using the buttons the way they are with my left hand. I use the left mouse at least half the time, and it really has helped with my right hand. Mostly it's nice not to have to push through the pain when I use the right mouse; if it's painful, I just switch.
Unfortunately, I have an exciting new problem with my right hand. I saw that a few people write with their machine pods vertical instead of horizontal. I had tried it out when I first got the IE and it didn't seem good at all, but since the ergo specialist was here I've been using the Report-It, so I thought maybe it would be different now. I gave it a good try for about an hour and a half. It was surprisingly not that hard to write that way, but it just wasn't going to be comfortable.
After that I had to put everything back in "normal" position (since the specialist was here I've been trying it with the pods separated all the way), and ever since then there's been something wrong with the right pod, at least for my hand. I can't reach the U without pain, and my right wrist hurts. I've had that problem with the A and the U before, where it kinks up my thumb for some reason, and then eventually after moving it around a bunch for other reasons, I get it in a spot that doesn't hurt my thumb.
My left hand is that way now - I have minimal pain with the A. But the right hand is awful. Previously I've been able to fix it by just trying to line the pod up "straight", like parallel to me, but it's not working this time. I've tried raising/lowering, titling up/down and left/right, physically moving the machine left/right, and nothing seems to fix it. I'm really at a loss. I guess I could try to "reset" everything and start from scratch, but since the left side isn't any worse than usual I'm hesitant to mess with it.
I also got a suggestion from the owner of the IE company, Jason Pardikes. He said maybe I should make my stroke deeper, to about 4-5mm. It was already at 3mm, which I felt like was pretty deep, but I gave it a shot. It's pretty crazy; like writing in quicksand. I'm sort of getting used to it, but I think I changed it while I was already having problems with the right hand, and I'm not sure if it's making it worse or not. I haven't resorted to putting it back to 3mm to see if that fixes it yet, but I probably should.
I ordered one of the new "Gen O" IEs, so we'll see how that goes, hopefully in November, although that's just an early estimate. Supposedly you don't have to use the software to calibrate it after you make physical changes on the machine anymore, so that will remove one barrier to experimenting with different depths.
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