WristWidget brace

If you’ve followed my blog over the last several years then you know that I do a LOT of crocheting. What you don’t know is that I’ve also been suffering from wrist pain during most of that time. I would wear my regular wrist braces, but the friction of the constant movement against the elasticized fabric would cause hives. If I didn’t wear the brace then I would be sidelined for a few days with pain that ran down the outside of my wrist and only hurt when I was crocheting or bearing weight on it.

I knew it wasn’t carpal tunnel because I had none of those symptoms. And my wrist didn’t usually hurt unless I was pulling/opening something, lifting something, or trying to crochet. I did multiple searches online to try to figure out what was causing the pain and how I could get it to stop (short of giving up crochet).

My chiropractor gave me suggestions for wrist-strengthening exercises, but nothing really seemed to help. If I spent more than a few hours every day crocheting during the week I wouldn’t be able to manipulate the hook by Saturday due to the pain. There had to be SOMETHING that could help!

A few weeks ago I was grumpy because it was Saturday morning and I couldn’t crochet. The pain was too intense. This made me angry and I was determined to figure out a way to fix it!

I’m not sure if I finally managed to get the right sequence of words in the search engine, but suddenly I found an article about Ulnar Sided Wrist Pain. They were describing my pain exactly! Okay, now that I knew what it was, how could I prevent it? More searching led me to the WristWidget website. Really? That little brace is going to help my pain? And they want $29 for it??!!

I searched online for other braces that could help with this particular issue, but there don’t really seem to be very many. I saw that this brace was listed on Amazon so I read the reviews. I don’t know why because I never fully believe the low rated ones and I always feel that the highly rated reviews are written by family and friends of the company. But I was spending my Saturday morning researching wrist pain instead of crocheting, so I tossed it in my cart and had it in my hands within two days.

So, what did I think?

Well, over the last two weeks I’ve done a LOT of crocheting and I’ve worn it whenever I have a hook in my hand. So far *knocks on wood* there hasn’t been any pain!! I am trying not to over-do it as any kind of repetitive motion is not good for extended periods of time. However, it has enabled me to do a lot more crocheting than I would have if I hadn’t been wearing it. I don’t make it really tight. I just snug it up enough to keep everything secure. Since there’s not a whole lot of material there it doesn’t constrict my wrist movement or hinder any kind of motion at all. In fact, sometimes I forget that I’m wearing it.

Sure, $29 might be a lot to pay for two pieces of Velcro, but it was money well spent. When you are in so much pain that you can’t hardly use your hand or wrist I don’t think you would bat an eye at giving somebody $29 to make it all go away. If you have this kind of wrist pain you can easily see if this will work for you by following the instructions given on their website. If taping your wrist (as they suggest) doesn’t work then don’t buy the brace. It’s as simple as that. It works for me and I love it.