The good news: the wrist pain I’m having is not carpal tunnel. It’s another condition that can also cause wrist pain. I forget the name, and I only remember that it starts with an “a”. Yeah, real helpful. There’s an interesting web page on wrist pain that gives me a couple ideas.

Anyway, obviously, I went to see Dr. Kyle Oh over at Kirkland Spinecare this morning. We got there, filled out paperwork, then he took me back and did some really cool nerve testing. Basically, he uses electrodes and some contacts to run low-voltage electricity through nerves to figure out the response time. If the response time falls within a particular standard deviation (I believe he said something like 2 standard deviations from the norm), it indicates a problem (though not necessarily carpal tunnel). Luckily, I fell within that standard deviation, and he prescribed a wrist support, which we picked up at a nearby pharmacy. Ironically, this wrist wrap is a lot like the ones I’ve already been using to try and help this problem. He also recommended setting up my desk to be more ergonomic and to get some ergonomic computer equipment.

Anyway, after that we went over and saw my friendly audiologist (Evergreen Speech and Hearing). We made some tiny adjustments to my hearing aid programming based on further feedback, but we decided to keep testing the new aids to see whether we could get them to work in a satisfactory manner. They were nice enough to extend the one-month purchase return deadline from September 20 to October 15 to give me more time to test the aids in classroom and work situations. That really made my day, since I was concerned about having to return them before I had a chance to test them in my current primary environment.

We also went shopping.

Went over to Linens ‘n’ Things in Woodinville after we had lunch at Red Robin (mmm, Mocha Smoothie), and I picked up a new torchiere lamp, placemats, and some goop remover that works nicely on that sticker goop you get when you remove the price stickers on some products. I also picked up a hole punch and scissors from Officemax. I also got a mouse pad with a gel wrist rest, which I’ll start using.

Not much else to report other than that. The week slogs on until I go down to the apartment for the year and start really setting stuff up. I called Olympic Heights before my appointment with Dr. Oh and confirmed that I can get a walkthrough of the apartment with management at 10AM on Friday. So at about 8AM on Friday, we’re Oly-bound.