Remodeling is a Pain
August 13th, 2005 | Published in RSI Stories
We’re remodeling our house, and I’m doing some of the work myself. A few days ago we pulled up the carpet in the basement, and found that the padding was clued to the concrete floor. I ended up using a floor scraper tool to get the padding off the concrete.
This isn’t terribly difficult, but requires sliding the blade of the tool against the underside of the padding, to cut the padding free from the glue. This took about an hour or so. I didn’t think this would cause me any problems, and I didn’t feel any pain at the time (other than an aching back), but that evening my wrist began to hurt, and the next morning it hurt worse. I ultimately took a pill for the pain, something I haven’t had to do in several months.
The pain was significantly diminished the next day, and gone entirely the day after that.
I suppose that the lesson here is to be mindful of what I’m doing, and watch out for activities that may stress my hand, wrist, and arm. In this case, I think that each stroke of the blade cutting through the hardened glue and padding sent a shock through my arm, and the cumulative effect of that was what caused the pain.
Lesson #2: Hire someone else to do the hard work!
