Word: stressful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Does anybody remember RSI? A year ago, even the few of us unsure of what the dread acronym stood for (for the record, both repetitive strain injury and repetitive stress injury are correct) knew enough to tremble at the slightest twinge in our wrists. Idle hands would lapse unconsciously into the aptly-named "prayer stretch" as we invoked our various patron saints to protect us from the debilitating disease. These days, however, as the "RSI Action Group" mousepads at email terminals start to fray at the edges, the former scourge of the keyboard seems about as threatening as scurvy...
...Perhaps the most often-asked question about RSIs is one of origins. Why haven t we heard of it before? Dr. Coley answers that RSIs are not new. In fact, "cumulative stress disorders," as he calls them, have been "well-known in a few professions for a long time. Meatpackers, as well as truck drivers and seamstresses, have had to deal with RSIs for years. The best known among those trades was carpal tunnel syndrome, an inflammation of the nerves in the forearm that often resulted from strenuous work with heavy vibrations-something along the lines of working a jackhammer...
...between typing and repetitive strain injury is not what I had. Someone who is on the computer 10 hours a day, just banging away, is one thing, but that wasn t me. Mine came, yes, from doing layout at the Crimson, but primarily from poor posture and, also, from stress in general." Suleiman suggests that perhaps RSIs are a matter as much of perception as positioning. "I wouldn t say I have it now," he insists. "I guess I d say I had it, but what s the difference? I mean I still have symptoms...
...model of pain, one that posits that "if it hurts, there must be a tear, or a break." While she is quick to point out that "the injuries are real," she believes that it is more complicated than that. "I definitely believe that a big part of it is stress-related." As an example, she recounted how "when I m dictating with [the voice-activation software] DragonDictate, where you have to pause between each word, I ll start to get really tense and then my arms start to hurt." Or similarly, "Sometimes I find that when I go and meet...
...legalizing the cultivation and possession of marijuana for medicinal purposes? And when all it takes to prove need is the approval, written or oral, of a friendly doctor? And when not just patients with AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis are clamoring for the drug but also people with backaches, stress and drinking problems? One arrested planter told sheriff's deputies he was suffering from an ingrown toenail, an excuse that did not impress them. Lucy Mae Tuck, a volunteer who edits the newsletter at the Humboldt Cannabis Center, a co-op that grows the drug for medicinal...