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Lixy, I've had the carpal thing going for years myself...& I can still remember the night at work that it first flared up (3-4 hrs of microsurgery on a piece of film I was stripping up, repetitive motion with an exacto knife, when dinner break came the base of my thumb down to my wrist was on fire)...just dealt with it for 10 years or so, til unemployment & disability solved most of my problem...still work with my hands a lot, tho, & the worst pain I have these days is at the knuckle joint at the base of my index finger (prob from clicking the mouse all the time)...feels like a needle is stuck in there, for that I've found the pain-relieving creams like Aspercreme or Myoflex helps a bunch...only temporaryily, but hey...
I know what ya mean about the hands showing the signs of age & abuse, too, increasingly I notice my hands & arms beginning to look like my mother's, she had 7 different forms of athritis, plus Lupus, none of her fingers would straighten out at the end...yet she continued quilting & embroidering to the very end.
I ended up going to a neurologist when my back pain got intense, & he put me thru a whole course of tests to diagnose the carpal tunnel thing...as if I didn't already know that, I think he just liked playing with his expensive toy...that, or he just enjoyed watching me twitch on the table everytime he jolted me with the electric shocks...he did tell me I had an unusual thing going where the nerve truck in my arms actually split at the elbow, whereas most people have the split down at the wrist...but I already knew I wasn't wired up right LOL...his advice about surgery was the same, if ya don't stop doing what you're doing the carpal will just come back, he sold me a pair of wrist braces to to wear at night that were supposed to help...they're laying unused on the headboard now, but you can try that, the same ones are available at most pharmacies...