See Igor, it moves...

I've had a morning written by Mary Shelley.

As part of my ongoing - and slightly halfhearted - attempts to sort out my wrist problems, I've been to the hospital. Now, the wrist problems are some kind of RSI - but that's such a blanket vague term, it's very hard to know what exactly the problem is, particularly as my symptoms come and go according to their own fell schedule.

The latest thinking - after finally having a GP who took me seriously enough to refer me to a speciallist - is that my posture has become stooped due to the excessive ammounts of time I spend sitting in front of computers. Specifically, I push my chin forward, which means my neck bends at the wrong point. This means that my cervical spine is slowly beginning to fuse - an arthritic condition called Spondylosis. The stiffness this causes means that the big nerves are being pressed where they exit from my spincal cord - and that's what makes my arms, wrists and hands hurt. Phew. So, strictly, I have PRULD - Posture related upper limb disorder.

Anyway, to make damn sure that the pressure in my neck was the problem, and not some pinching or nerve damage further down, the speciallist sent me to another speciallist for an EMG. That's Electromyography to us laymen - or electric-muscle-drawing if you translate the doctorese.

Having finally found the right bit of St georges hospital - which is insanely huge, I add - I finally got ushered in to a tiny little room, and electrodes were taped to my arm.

The doctor then used a taser to give me electric shocks. And when he'd done with that, he stuck needles deep into my muscles, put elecrified lasoos around my fingers, and made me tense my muscles around the needles. And then he ran current through the electrified lasoos. Which made my arms twitch, further moving the needles that were well embedded in my flesh.

It was the most horrible, sick-to-your-stomach thing I've ever had done. Much worse than having my back cut open. And my arm still hurts an hour and a half later.

Ow.

And it turns out that the tests proved the problem is in my neck, as suspected.

Grr.