I've had it, and it did get better slowly. It cost me many thousands of dollars of lost work. The doctors are pretty useless in many cases.

0. Proper sleep, exercise and nutrition are important.

1. Hit the keyboard more gently.

2. If you're a wide person, like me, your elbows are out to the sides and your hands come in from the sides. So get a split keyboard like the Microsoft Natural. There are plenty of other keyboards that are split and "Ergonomic".

3. I had to drop Emacs, as it overused the ^X and meta-x keys. I mapped them to Function keys but that wasn't enough.

4. Not all RSI is carpal tunnel. There are even other tunnels. The thing about tunnels is that both a nerve and a tendon will go through the same tunnel in bone. When the tendon inflames it enlarges and squeezes the nerve against the bone. Misery ensues. You're body has lots of tunnels. There's even a pair in the head.

5. The best voice software is or was from a company from "Dragon Systems". The business history of this company is fascinating. Their "Naturally Speaking" product might still be the best.

6. Find and talk to some people in your state who have been on Disability. In some states, your Disability claims get paid by the last company you worked for. This results in you being blackballed by the business community. The companies seem to share information on employees and this might be legal. That's what those industry organizations are for, among other things. People who go on Disability are likely to sue. They don't want that. In the US, it varies from State to State. Get local information.

7. In some times and places, Disability is a big con and the bureaucracy has learned to treat all claimants as crooks; you are guilty until proven innocent. This is an important psychological injury and leads to trouble.

8. RSI can cause people to hate their jobs, and hate computers, they become the enemy. Work attitude suffers. Some management knows this and will head of trouble by getting rid of injured employees at the first excuse.

9. Get three different styles of keyboard and two or three mice. You an actually plug them all in at the same time if they're all USB.

10. See a hand specialist and an orthopedist. There is also a chance that what you really have is some outlier; like cancer of the bone in the hands, or something weird. Nerve damage can also be caused by bone weakness or osteoporosis. Have it all checked.

11. Docs tend to look at bilateral problems (both hands) differently. The trouble might be in the common parts, the spinal cord or the brain. This could be good news if they're right, as some mental problems and neurological conditions are easier to treat than soft tissue injuries.

12. Physical therapy can be very annoying but also be very, very useful. Do whatever they say as if it is God Himself commanding you from the Mountain. Do it every day, if they say so.

13. Going Dvorak means a new keyboard for both home and work. Give up game-playing and some web surfing. TV is also bad for you. You need basic exercise, walk or run. No handball, racquetball, tennis, ping-pong, hammering. Make sure you have an electric screwdriver or don't do that at all. I found that swimming stressed my hands.

14. If you take as many breaks as the RSI experts say, your whole level of intensity will go down. I don't even know if it's possible to relax your body as you work your mind unless your a Zen master, or something.

15. If you research the subject, you can terrify yourself and be paralyzed with anxiety. If you research RSD/RSI together, you'll leave work and become a monk out on a mountaintop, and starve to death. Okay, I'm exaggerating, here.

16. Proper sleep, exercise and nutrition are STILL important.

17. You might checkout http://www.rsirescue.com/, I haven't looked that stuff for years...

18. The only way to sit up straight is to raise the monitor screens. If you raise them too high, you'll be looking up, which is just as bad.

19. The most expensive chairs, keyboards, and so on are worth it, financially, if they work. Lost work is more expensive than any of those.

20. In some states, employers have to assume that if you were out of work for a while, you must have been in prison. This is because prison records get sealed after a few years so that ex-prisoners can get jobs and rehabilitate. So if you've been out of work a few years ago and don't have a prison record, you look just like somebody who actually was in prison.