The past month report will be short. Indeed Aryeom sprained the thumb from her drawing hand, as we already told a month ago. What we did not plan is that it would take that long to get better (the doctor initially said it should be better within 2 weeks… well she was wrong!). Aryeom actually tried to work again after 2-week rest (i.e. following doctor advice), but after a few days of work, the pain was pretty bad and she had to stop.
Later Aryeom has started working from the left hand. Below is her first drawing with her left hand:
I personally think it is very cool but she says it is not enough for professional work. Also she is a few times slower with this hand for the moment. Yet for ZeMarmot, she started animating again with the left hand (wouhou!), but not doing finale painting/render. She is waiting the right hand to get better for this.
In the meantime, she has regular sessions with a physiotherapist and Friday, she’ll do a radiograph of the hand to make sure everything is OK (since pain lasted longer than expected).
Because of this, the month was slow. We also decided to refuse a few conferences, and in particular the upcoming Capitole du Libre, quite a big event in France in November, because we wanted to focus on ZeMarmot instead, especially because of the lateness which this sprain generated on the schedule. We will likely participate to no public event until next year.
Probably now is a time when your support will matter more than ever because it has been pretty hard, on Aryeom in particular, as you can guess. When your hand is your main work tool, you can imagine how it feels to have such an issue. :-/
Do not hesitate to send her a few nice words through comments!
Next month, hopefully the news will be a lot better.
I’ve struggled with hand issues in the past… I sympathize with how it feels. At one point I believed my programming career was over.
I bounced back on things though. I do recommend taking things seriously, and taking the time necessary to recover. Probably some changes to your workflow are needed too… or at least I found such in my case.
This is mostly for typists, but maybe helpful: http://gmarceau.qc.ca/articles/your-wrists-hurt-you-must-be-a-programmer.html
Anyway, sorry to hear it. I hope she gets better. All the best luck in recovery!
She actually didn’t sprain her thumb with bad work habits, but by lifting a bag over her head. Stupid accident. :-/
This said, she also has some shoulder pain, this time probably because of position issues. That’s also one of the reason she sees as physiotherapist. She has been reading and searching a lot about this, but it’s hard to actually find completely reliable information.
In any case, she is resting her left hand. For the last month, the mouse is on the left side, and she started drawing again, but from left hand only for now.
/me strongly wishes that Aryeon recovers her painful wrists, gets back to work at 150% and make ZeMarmot even greater.
Thanks for the words! 🙂