It doesn't sound like tendonitis to me. I'm not a doctor, but I've spent "tens of hours" researching in this area for my own sake.
There are a lot of people out there who will tell you their "symptoms" got better when they switched to an ergonomic keyboard or a vertical mouse. My theory is that this "very gradual relief" is typically because those ergonomic peripherals subtly relieve nerve impingement going on in, say, the shoulder area. For example, a split keyboard that slopes up towards the middle achieves two things: 1) it pushes the shoulders more out of interior rotation (interior rotation causes Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) and 2) allows the forearms to not be in full pronation (though this is apparently less important as the related nerve impingement, Pronator Teres Syndrome, is linked to repeated pronation MOVEMENTS, not static pronation like you'd expect at a desk job).
I remember reading a Medium article last Summer where the author (a SWE) talked about how switching to an ergonomic keyboard helped, but it took several months to recover from "RSI". To me, it sounds like he switched to an ergonomic, split keyboard, that VERY SLOWLY (over a period of months), relieved interior rotation of the shoulders. I believe that the author would have experienced more drastic relief, sooner, if he engaged in certain stretches and exercises aimed at correcting posture/strengthening posture muscles.
I can't stress enough how important it is that you figure out WHICH RSI you are dealing with. There's A LOT of armchair/self diagnosis going on in places like /r/RSI where people A) don't know which RSI they have and just try things until something works and B) often assert they have "many" RSIs (e.g. tendonitis AND carpal tunnel syndrome AND cubital tunnel syndrome) - this is possible but unlikely. The problem with A is that the treatment for tendonitis is very different from the treatment for carpal/cubital tunnel syndromes, arthritis, radiculopathy, etc. Some on /r/RSI complain of "years of pain", were diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, but are refusing (or are perhaps unable) to get Carpal Tunnel Release surgery, which I compare to wisdom teeth removal in both commonality and risk-reward.
Finally, it seems to often take many months, or even years to get a proper diagnosis for "RSI". I recommend to people to do their own research, but do NOT rely on Google. OrthoBullets is a great website full of reliable information, especially in the area of diagnosis. It's meant for medical students, but still very readable by those with other backgrounds. NIH.gov has a lot of good info, like research papers/studies that shows things like:
- There lacks strong evidence to support the notion that Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and using a computer have a causal relationship (correlation does not imply causation!)
- Nerve conduction studies (often abbreviated as NCS and EMG) often return a normal/clean result, in spite of nerve impingement, and seem to be useless particularly in early cases (e.g. the nerve related symptoms started, say, a few months ago).
There are a lot of people out there who will tell you their "symptoms" got better when they switched to an ergonomic keyboard or a vertical mouse. My theory is that this "very gradual relief" is typically because those ergonomic peripherals subtly relieve nerve impingement going on in, say, the shoulder area. For example, a split keyboard that slopes up towards the middle achieves two things: 1) it pushes the shoulders more out of interior rotation (interior rotation causes Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) and 2) allows the forearms to not be in full pronation (though this is apparently less important as the related nerve impingement, Pronator Teres Syndrome, is linked to repeated pronation MOVEMENTS, not static pronation like you'd expect at a desk job).
I remember reading a Medium article last Summer where the author (a SWE) talked about how switching to an ergonomic keyboard helped, but it took several months to recover from "RSI". To me, it sounds like he switched to an ergonomic, split keyboard, that VERY SLOWLY (over a period of months), relieved interior rotation of the shoulders. I believe that the author would have experienced more drastic relief, sooner, if he engaged in certain stretches and exercises aimed at correcting posture/strengthening posture muscles.
I can't stress enough how important it is that you figure out WHICH RSI you are dealing with. There's A LOT of armchair/self diagnosis going on in places like /r/RSI where people A) don't know which RSI they have and just try things until something works and B) often assert they have "many" RSIs (e.g. tendonitis AND carpal tunnel syndrome AND cubital tunnel syndrome) - this is possible but unlikely. The problem with A is that the treatment for tendonitis is very different from the treatment for carpal/cubital tunnel syndromes, arthritis, radiculopathy, etc. Some on /r/RSI complain of "years of pain", were diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, but are refusing (or are perhaps unable) to get Carpal Tunnel Release surgery, which I compare to wisdom teeth removal in both commonality and risk-reward.
Finally, it seems to often take many months, or even years to get a proper diagnosis for "RSI". I recommend to people to do their own research, but do NOT rely on Google. OrthoBullets is a great website full of reliable information, especially in the area of diagnosis. It's meant for medical students, but still very readable by those with other backgrounds. NIH.gov has a lot of good info, like research papers/studies that shows things like:
- There lacks strong evidence to support the notion that Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and using a computer have a causal relationship (correlation does not imply causation!)
- Nerve conduction studies (often abbreviated as NCS and EMG) often return a normal/clean result, in spite of nerve impingement, and seem to be useless particularly in early cases (e.g. the nerve related symptoms started, say, a few months ago).